U.S.-TRAINED SOLDIERS IN PLACE FOR COLOMBIA'S WAR ON DRUGS

LARANDIA ARMY BASE, Colombia -- A cannon blast marked the start of the
ceremony at this military base deep in the jungles of southern Colombia.

As 14 helicopters buzzed overhead, soldiers in camouflage face paint and
black berets marched through a cloud of yellow, blue and red smoke -- the
colors of the Colombian flag -- toward the generals at the reviewing stand.
A Catholic priest in a white cassock then trudged across the water-logged
field toward the formation, uttered a prayer and sprinkled holy water.

With that, Colombia graduated the second of three army battalions to be
trained in the art of counternarcotics warfare by U.S. Army Special Forces
instructors. The training, and hundreds of millions of dollars in American
aid for troop helicopters and other military hardware, form the centerpiece
of President Andres Pastrana's ambitious plan to root out the coca
cultivation that has fueled Colombia's brutal civil conflict.

"A great responsibility rests on your shoulders," Colombian Defense
Minister Luis Fernando Ramirez told the graduating soldiers as high-ranking
American and Colombian military officials listened. "The hour has arrived,
as we've predicted, for this brigade to become the principal headache for a
small group of Colombians who have declared war on 40 million Colombians."

The battalion, numbering more than 600 soldiers, received training under a
$1.3 billion American aid package designed to stem drug production in
Colombia and, in the process, cut leftist rebels off from their main source
of financing. When a third battalion completes training in April, Colombia
will have a 3,000-man antinarcotics brigade to use in Colombia's coca
heartland, the southern jungle provinces of Putumayo and Caqueta.

For the soldiers who form Battalion No. 2, the graduation was a proud day.
It was a much-anticipated finale after four rigorous months of all-purpose
military and antinarcotics training, in addition to instructions on how to
avoid entanglements involving noncombatants.

Sgt. Mauricio Garcia, an 11-year veteran who marveled at how much better a
soldier he has become with American instruction, said he was eager to swing
into action against coca laboratories and drug traffickers.

"We want to finish off the coca and hit them hard," Garcia said. "It's so
important because this problem is finishing off our society. Little by
little they are doing away with us. So we are the ones who are going to
defend the people."

The events at Larandia, a base built on a giant farm once owned by a
rancher named Oliverio Lara, had a festive air. Proud relatives in spiffy
clothes beamed as young soldiers received certificates and congratulatory
handshakes from the military brass.

But both the soldiers and high-ranking Colombian and American officials
were under no illusions.

The soldiers of the counternarcotics brigade are expected to meet stiff
resistance in the field, either from drug traffickers or rebels of the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. The rebel group, with an
estimated 17,000 fighters nationwide, is accused of making millions of
dollars by taxing traffickers and running the coca-processing labs
scattered throughout the jungle.

The training of the second battalion came as chaos has reigned in Putumayo,
where about half of Colombia's coca crops are cultivated. The rebel group,
long established in the province, had been challenged by its nemesis, the
United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, a right-wing paramilitary group
that human rights organizations say has had ties to the Colombian military.
The rebels responded by blocking roads throughout Putumayo from late
September until just this past week, when rebel leaders told a U.N. envoy
they would lift their travel bans.

The recent events in the Vermont-sized province have worried experts and
government officials, both in Colombia and the United States, who have
questioned how effective the brigade will be.

"They could very well be engaged with paramilitary forces, as well as FARC
forces," said Rep. Bill Delahunt, a Massachusetts Democrat who is on the
International Relations Committee. "So it further complicates the picture.
It adds an additional burden to their mission, and I think it creates a
more dangerous mission because of the increasing presence of the
paramilitaries."