COLOMBIAN CONFLICT DOMINATES TALK AT WESTERN HEMISPHERE DEFENSE SUMMIT

MANAUS, Brazil -- Defense ministers from throughout the Western Hemisphere
assembled in the heart of the Amazon yesterday to begin four days of
meetings aimed at strengthening military and security cooperation in the
region.

But the formal agenda of the meeting in Manaus was overshadowed by the
deepening conflict in Colombia and the increased American commitment there.
Leaders continued to express reservations about being drawn into the
conflict in any way.

Both the U.S. secretary of defense, William Cohen, and his Colombian
counterpart, Luis Fernando Ramrez Acuna, were on hand to allay concerns
generated by the Clinton administration's recent decision to provide $1.3
billion in emergency aid, most of it in military assistance, to the
Colombian government.

"It's a very delicate situation internally in Colombia," Fernando Henrique
Cardoso, president of Brazil, said at a news conference yesterday afternoon
after formally opening the conference, attended by every country in the
Americas except Cuba. But, he added, "the problem is a domestic problem,"
and "we are not interested at all in any kind of Brazilian intervention in
Colombia."

This city and the issue of Amazon security were chosen as the locale and
theme of the meeting months before the United States approved the aid
package, which is aimed at weakening drug traffickers and the guerrilla
groups that protect them.

But "Plan Colombia," as the effort is called, has forced every government
in the region to reassess its military readiness and has drawn widespread
criticism from politicians, the press and religious leaders.

During a visit to Brazil in late August, for instance, President Hugo
Chavez of Venezuela warned that the American aid plan could lead to "the
Vietnamization of the entire Amazon." Without mentioning Chavez by name,
Cohen, who returned to Washington yesterday afternoon in order to attend a
memorial service today for sailors who died in the attack on the destroyer
Cole, emphatically denied that any such escalation would take place.

"We do not, under any circumstances, intend to become involved militarily
in Colombia," Cohen said. "Anything that you read or hear to the contrary
is completely false and fabricated."

Government leaders, especially in the five countries that border Colombia,
have expressed concern that an influx of coca cultivation, refugees and
fighting on their own territory may result from the push the Colombian
government is planning into coca-growing areas under guerrilla control. But
Cohen argued that any effort to ignore the crisis or stay aloof from it was
likely to backfire.

"The United States is concerned that the 'spillover' of those problems to
neighboring states, which has been increasing in recent years, will only
worsen if we do nothing," he said yesterday. "Working together, we hope to
help Colombia in its time of need and prevent the conflict from shifting
Colombia's problems to its neighbors."