COLOMBIAN TROOPS SET TO MARCH IN DRUG WAR

U.S.-Trained Units To Hit Cocaine Trade

LARANDIA ARMY BASE, Colombia -- Helicopters thunder past a reviewing stand
and out over a river snaking through the world's cocaine heartland. Rows of
grim-faced troops trained by U.S. Green Berets snap to attention.

Martial music plays, diplomas are presented and a Roman Catholic priest
sprinkles holy water on the soldiers, the vanguard of a U.S.-backed
military push to wipe out cocaine.

Graduation day in the war on drugs.

The soldiers honored Friday at this sprawling army base in Colombia's
rolling southern plains -- a 620-man battalion prepared by Army Special
Forces troops based at Fort Bragg, N.C. -- have their work cut out for them.

Under the offensive backed by a $1.3 billion U.S. aid package, the
battalion will venture out any day now into jungles and Amazonian
tributaries teeming with heavily armed guerrillas. Major operations are
expected to get under way by January at the latest.

The 15,000-strong Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, is
deeply involved in the cocaine trade, yielding the rebels mounds of cash --
and making them a key target for U.S. and Colombian efforts to stamp out
the narcotics industry.

The elite, U.S.-trained battalions, coordinating with police and
prosecutors, aim to seize and destroy coca fields and laboratories, arrest
suspects who give themselves up and attack anyone who fights back, whether
they are insurgents or common criminals.

"The bottom line is this," said Gen. Peter Pace, the commander of U.S.
military operations in Latin America, who attended the ceremony at
Larandia, about 235 miles southwest of Bogota. "If that person, male or
female, is trafficking in drugs, regardless of what ideology they have,
they are drug traffickers."

The battalion christened Friday is the second of three Colombian army units
to be prepared and ferried into battle on dozens of U.S.-donated combat
helicopters. A third battalion should be ready by the middle of next year,
completing training of nearly 3,000 troops and service personnel under
President Andres Pastrana's so-called Plan Colombia.

The specialized army battalions involve the Colombian military as never
before in anti-drug operations. The U.S. training program brings the
American military into a close partnership with Colombian forces long
accused of human-rights abuses against civilians in fighting the rebels.
But officials are promising a clean operation and no direct U.S. troop
involvement.

In addition to general soldiering skills such as marksmanship, Green Beret
trainers said they are teaching the troops police-style tactics such as
handcuffing suspects and bagging evidence that could be used in trials.

Human-rights instruction and "target discrimination" are also being
emphasized, to prevent unarmed civilians from getting killed in raids on
drug laboratories or coca fields.

Human-rights monitors are skeptical of the program. Peace activists say a
military push into the FARC's main southern stronghold could trigger heavy
fighting and derail peace talks to end the 36-year war.