BUDGET MAY DELAY HELICOPTERS FOR COLOMBIA

WASHINGTON -(AP)- Colombia may have to wait until at least 2002 for delivery
of the Black Hawk helicopters that are a key part of a $1.3 billion U.S.
anti-drug aid package, Clinton administration officials said Thursday.

The officials also told lawmakers that the administration is not certain it
will have enough money to buy all 18 helicopters included in the plan.

Republican critics of the administration's handling of Colombian aid said
the delays would set back drug-fighting efforts in Colombia, the source of
an estimated 90 percent of the cocaine in the United States and much of the
heroin.

"This is a war that's going to be lost if we wait two or three years," said
Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind.

The Defense Department's "conservative" estimates are that the first
helicopters would be delivered in October 2002 and all by May 2003, Rand
Beers, the State Department's top counterdrug official, told members of the
International Relations Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs.

Mr. Beers and Brian Sheridan, assistant defense secretary for special
operations, agreed that the delays were unacceptable and said they were
working to speed up the purchases.

They also said they still hoped all 18 Black Hawks could be acquired.

Scott Seligman, a spokesman for the Black Hawks' manufacturer, Sikorsky
Aircraft Corp., said the company could deliver all 18 helicopters for $234
million - the amount budgeted by Congress - by October 2001.