COMBUSTIBLE COLOMBIA

The first foreign policy crisis to confront the Bush administration could
come in Colombia. The violent mix of war and illicit drug production in
that troubled nation already exposes American military forces there to
lethal dangers and threatens to draw the United States deeper into a
conflict that has bedeviled Colombia for 40 years. The American approach
warrants a searching reassessment by President Bush and his aides before
the dangers escalate.

The Clinton administration and Congress bequeathed to Mr. Bush a program
known as Plan Colombia, which commits the United States to spend $1.3
billion over two years in Colombia, most of it for military aid and
forcible coca eradication. Among other things, Washington will provide the
Colombian Army and the police with about 50 new helicopters. Unfortunately,
the plan is unlikely to achieve its main objectives, which include reducing
the amount of cocaine on America's streets, extending the Colombian
government's control of the country and lowering the level of violence.

Colombia has the potential to flare into a Latin American version of the
ill-fated American role in Somalia in 1993, when 18 American soldiers were
killed as Washington tried to help bring some order to an anarchic land.
There are 250 to 300 American soldiers on the ground in Colombia manning
radar stations and training troops, and about the same number of civilian
contract employees. Some are in the war zones. Colombian guerrillas have
said they consider Americans to be legitimate military targets.

The exposure of the Americans, and Washington's ill-defined role in
Colombia, ought to concern a new administration that has made clear it is
wary of intervening in foreign conflicts where America's security goals are
uncertain and its military mission is unclear.

The military component of Plan Colombia is designed to attack the coca that
provides money for the country's largest Marxist guerrilla group. But the
guerrillas can simply move their coca production to other zones they
control, and there are indications that this is happening. The aid will
also likely strengthen murderous right-wing paramilitary forces, which are
responsible for the vast majority of the thousands of political killings in
Colombia each year.

American military assistance will flow to government forces, primarily the
army. But collaboration between the Colombian Army and paramilitary units
is extensive. Plan Colombia requires the army to reduce its paramilitary
collaboration before it can receive American aid. But President Clinton
waived these conditions, sending a damaging signal that Washington does not
really care.

There are better ways for the United States to help restore government
control and a measure of security in Colombia. Plan Colombia provides some
money for crop substitution, rural development and the justice system, but
should do more. This is the approach that Colombia's president, Andres
Pastrana, proposed upon taking office in 1998.

The United States could also help professionalize the military, as its
passivity and ineptitude created the vacuum the paramilitaries are filling.
But every effort should be made to keep American trainers out of Colombia's
war zones, and the army should only receive aid if it first cuts its ties
with death squads.

Regrettably, American military aid has strengthened the hard-liners opposed
to a peace settlement on both sides, just as the Bush administration is
urging the guerrillas to negotiate with Mr. Pastrana. The guerrillas have
so far rebuffed his advances, though he has ceded land to one group and may
do the same for another to induce them to negotiate. The prospect of a
settlement may be faint, but it offers the best hope of ending the conflict.