AID FOES FEAR COLOMBIA WILL MIRROR EL SALVADOR

WASHINGTON - When President Clinton said last week that the $1.3 billion aid
package to Colombia will not lead to another Vietnam, some of the plan's
main critics agreed.

A better comparison, they say, is El Salvador.

In the 1980s, the United States helped El Salvador's military, despite its
human rights abuses, to fight leftist guerrillas.

In Colombia, where the "proxy war" is against drug traffickers and the
leftist forces helping them, Clinton waived human rights rules to deliver
the military aid package.

Even without a Vietnam-style buildup of U.S. combat troops in Colombia, the
United States could aggravate and prolong the 3-decade-old Colombian civil
war, critics argue.

"No, it's not another Vietnam, but it's still the wrong thing to do," said
Lisa Haugaard, legislative coordinator of the Latin American Working Group,
a coalition of more than 60 organizations including many that opposed the
aid to El Salvador.

In a brief visit Wednesday to Cartagena, Colombia, Clinton delivered the aid
and said the United States will not get into "a shooting war" in Colombia.

Administration officials have long stressed that the United States won't get
dragged into Colombia's civil war.

They say U.S. military aid is intended solely to help Colombia battle drug
traffickers, who account for an estimated 90 percent of the cocaine in the
United States.