EUROPEANS SCALE BACK COLOMBIAN DRUG AID

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica, Oct. 18 - 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 here for a conference on the Colombian conflict, European
diplomats said the $250 million aid package, to be presented in Bogota on
Tuesday, 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 had
anticipated--will mean less money than expected for government grass-roots
work considered essential for persuading farmers to turn their backs on the
drug trade by growing legal crops.

The decision is something of a setback for President Andres 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 roundly denounced
here during three days of workshops on human rights, economic development
and anti-drug strategies, uniting traditional U.S. allies and leftist
guerrillas on grounds it will exacerbate armed conflict in the Colombian
countryside.

Underscoring that opposition, 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 what has been
characterized here as 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 rather than the peace plan Colombian
officials have sold it as.

"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. "It will be very
difficult for [Europe] to say we support Plan Colombia because of the
psychology involved."

The smaller package reflects a marketing failure on the part of the
Colombian government that has delayed the start of its anti-drug plan.
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 the leftist guerrillas and privately
funded paramilitary groups whose fighting has terrorized the country's
drug-producing regions. By depriving the guerrillas of their chief form of
financing while building schools, roads and health clinics in
drug-producing areas, Pastrana has said, the government will emerge with a
stronger hand and public support at the peace table.

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 conflict zones, particularly in the coca-producing heartland of
southern Colombia.

But unlike the United States, European countries view Colombia as
experiencing a humanitarian crisis solvable only through social
development, and they have condemned the military elements of the
government's strategy. Several European diplomats here said the Colombian
government neglected to take those differing views into account in seeking
their help.

"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."