A BETTER SOLUTION FOR COLOMBIA

THE last time a British government resisted Washington's demands to sign up
for some foredoomed American enterprise in the Third World was in the '60s,
when former Prime Minister Harold Wilson refused to commit British troops
to Vietnam. He was right, but it is still remarkable that current Prime
Minister Tony Blair is showing resistance to letting Britain get drawn into
Washington's adventure in Colombia.

Mr. Blair has said nothing in public against "Plan Colombia" himself, but
last week, he let a senior minister in his government openly condemn the
U.S. plan.

British Cabinet Office Minister Mo Mowlam, visiting Bogota last week, was
scathing about U.S. President Bill Clinton's recent decision to waive
Congressional human rights conditions and hand over $1.3 billion to
Colombia anyway. European countries, she said, were refusing "across the
board" to send aid that would be used for the military suppression of the
drug trade until the Colombian military forces ended their human rights abuses.

The first target of Plan Colombia's helicopter-borne assault troops will be
the region of Putumayo in southern Colombia, right next to Peru and
Ecuador. So that's where the refugees will go, that's where FARC will
retreat to -- and that's where the drug-producers will move their coca
plantations. Next on the list will be Venezuela, once Plan Colombia turns
its attention to the coca plantations of Norte de Santander.

From the point of view of ordinary Colombians, Plan Colombia is likely to
end the hope of a negotiated peace after almost 40 years of civil war, kill
some tens of thousands of people who would otherwise not have died, and
drive some hundreds of thousands of people across Colombia's borders with
Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela as refugees.

From the point of view of Colombia's neighbours, it will give them a huge
refugee problem, and may move the fighting onto their territory. Worse, it
will shift the mafias who control large-scale cocaine production on to
their territories, thus corrupting their societies and destabilizing their
governments as Colombia has already been corrupted and destabilized.

And from the U.S. point of view, it offers the distant but plausible
possibility that Colombia could turn into the next Vietnam. What it does
not do is offer any prospect of halting or even slowing the flow of cocaine
to the vastly lucrative American domestic market that is the foundation of
the whole industry. That will never happen so long as the market is there:
if they mash southern Colombia, the coca plantations will just move next door.

There is an alternative approach. Colombian Congressman Julio Angel
Restrepo raised it last week in Ottawa, when he asked that the question of
legalizing narcotic drugs be put on the agenda of a new forum of North and
South American countries (with a membership identical to the Organization
of American States, but including opposition parties as well as
governments) whose inaugural meeting takes place in Canada next year.

"We believe the time has come to broach this subject," said Angel Restrepo,
pointing out that the old, failed approach was about to destroy his country
without doing anything to alleviate the drug habits of American consumers.
He's quite right, but several more countries will probably have to be
destroyed before American politicians are willing to consider ending drug
prohibition.

In the context of U.S. domestic politics, this does not matter very much so
long as the U.S. itself is not harmed. The odds are that the destruction of
Colombia will not entail any such costs for the United States, but nothing
is certain in these matters. It never occurred to Jack Kennedy, you will
recall, that his carefully limited offer of U.S. "advisers," weapons and
money to Vietnam could ever escalate into a commitment of over half a
million troops.

He was safely dead for several years before it happened. And whatever
happens in Colombia, Mr. Clinton will be safely out of office for several
years before we know about that, too.