NEW STRATEGIES CAN TURN TIDE IN COLOMBIA

U.S. Has Role in Supporting Democracy

The United States and Colombia are haunted by their pasts.

U.S. policy wants to combat drug traffickers there but doesn't want to
involve itself in another Vietnam.

Colombia is a nation of 40 million people with more than a half- century of
political and criminal violence. The vast majority of people are poor,
caught between the U.S.-backed military, narcotrafickers, leftist
guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries. More than 3,500 died last year.
Hundreds of thousands flee their homes in the lawless countryside.

U.S. military aid there - it has been significant, $1.7 billion since 1999
- - has come with strings. The helicopters and other equipment could not be
used in the guerrilla war, only against the drug traffickers.

That policy has failed, as did former Colombian President Andres Pastrana's
attempts to negotiate a peace. The newly inaugurated president, Alvaro
Uribe, promised a different, get-tough strategy. Colombians elected him in
a landslide.

U.S. policy is changing as well. Influential members of Congress, including
Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Democrat, and House Speaker Dennis Hastert, a
Republican, support a new military policy, one that now will allow those
Black Hawks and American-trained combat troops to pursue both of Colombia's
wars, including strikes against the paramilitaries, and not just drug
traffickers.

The new strategy carries a danger: that the American aid becomes too
closely aligned with human rights violators or an unpopular regime.

It has happened before.

But clearly, most Colombians want an end to the violence.

Negotiations haven't worked. After all, these guerrillas are no idealistic
land reformers. They attack civilians indiscriminately. They target power
lines that service the nation's suffering economy. Uribe won the election
precisely because he promised a "firm hand" with the violence.

The Bush administration is getting its wish: a more aggressive policy to
help a struggling democracy in Latin America.

Let's hope Uribe can succeed where his predecessors have failed. And that
his presidency can provide security with democracy.

Colombians have seen too little of either.