COLOMBIA SEEKS PUBLIC BACKING IN WAR

Average Citizens Asked To Sacrifice As Nation Tries To Expand Military

BOGOTA, Colombia -- As the Bush administration prepares to get deeply
involved in this nation's fight against Marxist guerrillas, Bogota's
officials are coming up with their own plans to boost military spending and
persuade average Colombians to sacrifice for the war effort.

With the collapse of peace talks last month and an onslaught of rebel
attacks, kidnappings and sabotage, a new sense of urgency has arisen in
both Washington and Bogota over the need to upgrade Colombia's armed
forces, which are considered too small to adequately defend the nation.

Next week, the Bush administration will ask Congress to lift long-standing
restrictions on U.S. military aid to the Andean country. If lawmakers sign
on, American trainers and equipment could be deployed not just for
Colombian government antidrug missions but for counterinsurgency operations
as well.

"We are determined to seek new and more explicit legal authorities for
State and Department of Defense assistance ... to support the Colombian
government's unified campaign against narcotics trafficking and terrorist
activities," Scott McClellan, a White House spokesman, told reporters
aboard Air Force One on Friday.

Even so, Colombians must do more to help themselves, according to Luis
Moreno, Bogota's ambassador to the United States.

"Colombians can't demand assistance in exchange for nothing," Moreno said
in an interview in Dinero, a Bogota business magazine. "The country has to
increase military spending and everyone --- rich and poor alike -- must
join the army to fight the war."

President Andres Pastrana has increased defense spending and carried out a
far-reaching program of military reforms. But it hasn't been enough to
definitively turn the tide in the war.

The nation remains bogged down in a many-sided conflict involving two
guerrilla groups, rightwing paramilitary organizations and drug
traffickers. Many experts believe that the 120,000-member armed forces will
have to double in size to defend the nation from the estimated 30,000
guerrillas and paramilitaries.

"Colombia is a huge nation with a very small army," said Alfredo Rangel, a
military analyst and an adviser to the Colombian Defense Ministry. Ideally,
he added, government forces should strive for a 10-to-1 advantage over the
enemy in troop strength.

For now, that's impossible because Colombia spends just 1.9 percent of its
gross domestic product on national defense. That figure puts Colombia
behind several Latin American countries that are at peace, including
Argentina, Brazil and Mexico.

By contrast, Israel spends 8.7 percent of its GDP on defense.

Pastrana was elected in 1998 on a peace platform. But three years of
off-and-on negotiations with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia,
the nation's largest rebel group known as the FARC, broke down on Feb. 20.

Since then, the Pastrana government has been scrambling to come up with new
funds for the military. It has considered everything from raising
taxes and cutting social spending to more radical measures like declaring
an economic emergency, which would allow it to bypass the Congress and push
through economic measures by decree.

But Pastrana appears to have little wiggle room since he is also striving
to meet economic targets under its agreement with International Monetary
Fund. His government has made $860 million in cuts in non-military spending
since the peace talks ended.

On Thursday, Treasury Minister Juan Manuel Santos suggested that some
Colombian workers and companies could donate one day's salary or profits to
a special defense fund.

"It would be good for all of us to assume a commitment to the nation's
defense," said Sen. German Vargas Lleras, when asked about scheme. "All
Colombians must contribute their grain of sand."

Yet the proposal, which Santos claims would bring in some $350 million, has
already stirred controversy and exposed the difficulties of trying to build
a nationwide coalition to win the war. Labor leaders, for example, said
upper-class Colombians should pay for the war and provide troops for the army.

"We will not give one peso for the war, or one son or one brother to
support an insensible war that is destroying the country," said Julio
Roberto Gomez, president of the General Confederation of Workers.

By contrast, a growing number of U.S. officials suddenly seem willing to
expand American involvement in the Colombian war.

The Bogota government has received nearly $2 billion in American aid in
recent years. But most of the money was channeled into counternarcotics
operations due to concerns that the United States could get sucked into a
Vietnam-like quagmire.

But the breakdown of the peace talks and growing concerns about terrorism
following the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States appear to have shifted
the balance. Now, many U.S. officials and legislators appear to favor a
more aggressive approach that would allow American assistance to be used
against the FARC, which is listed by the State Department as a terrorist
organization.

"Terrorism is a threat to the democratic institutions of Colombia," said
McClellan, the Bush administration spokesman.