COLOMBIA SEEKS U.S. TRADE BREAKS

QUEBEC (AP) - Declaring that free trade can help fight drug
trafficking, Colombian President Andres Pastrana said Friday that he
would ask President Bush for more trade concessions at the Summit of
the Americas.

Washington already is giving Colombia $1.3 billion in mostly military
aid to help it combat drugs. But Bush indicated he is prepared to do
more to help Colombia and other drug-producing nations.

``We want to work more closely with countries where drugs are
produced and traded, so countries can better fight the supply of
drugs at their source,'' Bush said in Washington before flying to
Quebec City.

Later Friday, Bush was to meet privately at a hotel with Pastrana and
the presidents of Brazil, Panama, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador and
Venezuela.

The meeting was delayed 20 minutes while Bush waited for the
Brazilian and Bolivian presidents to arrive. U.S. officials said the
pair was held up at the city's perimeter, which security shut down
due to protests.

Bush began without Bolivian President Hugo Banzer Suarez and
Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso; Banzer joined the
meeting in progress.

``We've got plans for all the countries in the region, and it's not
just on helping to fight drugs, it's on making sure that the
economies remain strong, that the infrastructure for education is in
place,'' Bush said. ``It is in our nations' interests that we
cooperate together.''

Pastrana and the other leaders want the United States to renew the
Andean Trade Preferences Act, which expires in December and exempts
Andean exports including flowers, minerals and oil from U.S. duties.

The Andean leaders also want the exemption expanded to other products
including textiles, and to bring Venezuela into the pact.

Lower trade barriers would help provide an alternative means of
earning a living to Colombians involved in the drug trade, Pastrana
said.

``The best way to eradicate drugs is investing in our people, pulling
them from illegal activities,'' Pastrana told reporters as he toured
the summit site, located within the old walled city of Quebec.

Colombia is confronted by a problem so enormous - with billions of
dollars in drug-trafficking proceeds fueling the nation's 37-year
civil war - that a military-style coca eradication offensive,
supported by Washington, is insufficient, Pastrana said.

Currently, U.S. Green Berets are training a Colombian army
counternarcotics battalion at a base near southern Colombia's war
zone. Two other battalions have already been trained and are
protecting U.S.-supplied crop dusters as they fumigate vast coca
plantations in Colombia.

Leftist rebels and a rival right-wing paramilitary group ``tax'' coca
producers and protect their plantations.

``We are fighting the biggest criminal organizations in humanity,''
Pastrana said. ``We need support from everyone.''

During the summit with 33 other heads of state from the Western
Hemisphere, Pastrana is also seeking moral support from neighboring
countries for his counterdrug strategy.

Months ago, those countries were expressing fears that Plan Colombia
- - as Pastrana's strategy is called - would cause thousands of
refugees and drug producers to spill across their borders. Although
there have been problems, the spillover effects have not been as vast
as feared.

However, opposition to the initiative remains. Before the summit, a
group of prominent Latin Americans wrote a letter to Bush expressing
their concern ``that current policy will cause more harm than good in
Colombia and the region at large - while having little or no effect
on the drug problems of the consumer countries.''

Signatories included Guatemalan Nobel Laureate Rigoberta Menchu,
former President of Bolivia Lydia Gueiler Tejada, former Colombian
Foreign Minister Rodrigo Pardo and Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano.