PATTEN: EU PLANS ONLY SMALL COLOMBIAN AID PACKAGE

BOGOTA (Reuters) - The European Union confirmed it plans a much smaller aid
package to Colombia than had been sought by the Bogota government, saying
on Tuesday it only wanted to match the slim social component of a $1
billion package of mainly military aid from the United States.

The EU's Commissioner for External Affairs, Chris Patten, told reporters on
a visit to Colombia the European Commission and Spain would each contribute
about $100 million in social aid this year to the war-torn Andean nation's
Plan Colombia.

That would nearly match the $224 million in U.S. social assistance now
headed to Colombia to help build sanitation facilities, schools and
hospitals in poor, rural areas, according to the Colombian government,
which had hoped for $1 billion from Europe.

"We hope in total we will be able to demonstrate that we are as active in
the social sector, at least as active as the Americans," Patten said after
meeting President Andres Pastrana.

His comments broadly echoed those of ambassadors who met in Bogota in
October to analyze Europe's aid for Plan Colombia, which originally
envisaged raising $7.5 billion to wipe out the narcotics trade financing a
37-year-old guerrilla war.

Promised funds have fallen well short of the plan's needs to help develop
poor rural areas where the narcotics trade flourishes and eradicate coca,
the raw material for cocaine in the world's top exporter of the drug.

Patten declined to specify total EU aid, saying: "We are not keen to start
bragging about figures until we have actually aggregated everything."

Critics in Europe say Pastrana's plan does not do enough to ease the
poverty that forces peasants to grow drugs. They also criticize growing
U.S. military involvement -- training pilots and supplying aircraft -- in
Colombia's war, which has claimed 40,000 lives in the past decade alone.