EU CUTS BACK ON DRUG AID FOR COLOMBIA

The European Union plans an aid package for Colombia that falls far short of
what Colombian officials had expected, weakening an anti-drug strategy that
has failed to win significant domestic or international support beyond the
United States.

Assembled in Costa Rica for a conference on the Colombian conflict, European
diplomats said the $250 million aid package will not be given directly to
the Colombian government. Instead, the aid will be channeled mostly to
programs run by nonprofit groups working for human rights, judicial reform
and economic development. In addition, its size - only a quarter of the
amount Colombia anticipated - will mean less money than expected for
government grass-roots work considered essential for persuading farmers to
abandon the drug trade and grow legal crops.

The decision is something of a setback for President Andrés
Pastrana's government, which had built its $7.5 billion anti-drug strategy,
known as Plan Colombia, around a $1 billion European commitment. Excluding
money the Colombian government had already planned to spend on anti-drug
programs, Plan Colombia now amounts to roughly half the size originally
advertised.

Europe's reluctance arises from the plan's $1.3 billion U.S. contribution,
heavily weighted toward military aid. The plan has been denounced in three
days of workshops on human rights, economic development and anti-drug
strategies.

European diplomats said they will pointedly separate their financial
assistance from Plan Colombia, leaving only the U.S. and Colombian
governments as major donors to a "war strategy." The concern among the
plan's supporters is that, without significant European support, the program
will be vulnerable to domestic criticism that it is another U.S. military
intervention in Latin America.

"The military aid [in the plan] has been like putting a blue stocking in the
wash with white clothes - everything comes out blue," said Marianne da Costa
de Moraes, Austria's ambassador to Colombia.

Since taking office in 1998, Pastrana has sought foreign support by
presenting Colombia's domestic drug industry as an international problem.
What emerged was Plan Colombia, a three-year strategy to eradicate the coca
and poppy crops that help finance leftist guerrillas. The United States
agreed to send money for social development programs, judicial reform and
crop substitution. But the bulk of the package will arrive as 57 helicopters
to shuttle U.S.-trained anti-drug battalions through the conflict zones.

European countries view Colombia as experiencing a humanitarian crisis
solvable only through social development, and they condemn the military
elements of the strategy. "It's the only aid package I know of where the
military component was put smack in the middle of a development package,"
said one Scandinavian diplomat here. "It contaminated everything in the eyes
of Colombian civil society and the European community."