CLINTON VOWS NO WAR INVOLVEMENT

CARTAGENA, Colombia - In a country beset by decades of violence, President
Clinton delivered a $1.3 billion U.S. package Wednesday which he said would
help Colombia defeat its drug traffickers without getting the United States
into a Vietnam-like quagmire.

"We will not get into a shooting war" with Colombian guerrillas, he said,
standing alongside Colombian President Andres Pastrana, both in short
sleeves in the sweltering heat of this Caribbean port city.

Pastrana stressed that Colombia has no intention of drawing the United
States into its military conflict.

"As long as Andres Pastrana is president, we will not have a foreign
military intervention in Colombia," he said.

There were reminders, during Clinton's half-day visit to Cartagena, of the
fear and violence that bleeds this Andean nation. Police said they
discovered and deactivated a 4.4-pound bomb found five blocks from a
neighborhood Clinton planned to tour.

Officials said the bomb was intended to spread rebel pamphlets and would
have been unlikely to cause harm. A U.S. Secret Service official, Terry
Samway, insisted that only materials for explosives were found, not a bomb.

In an unusual display of bipartisan support, Clinton was accompanied by
House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and 10 other members of Congress.
Hastert was instrumental in pushing the aid package through Congress,
despite misgivings by some who feared the United States would get drawn
into the guerrilla conflict and help an army long criticized for human
rights abuses.

Clinton was also accompanied by Attorney General Janet Reno, Secretary of
State Madeleine Albright and Barry McCaffrey, Clinton's chief drug policy
adviser — part of a delegation of 35. Daughter Chelsea also came along.

"Why are we here today?" Hastert said. "Not only do we share a great
heritage of democracy, but we also share a great burden" — the threat drugs
pose both to countries that produce drugs and those that consume them.

"In our nation, over 14,000 young people, children, lose their life every
year to either drug use or drug violence, and it happens in our wealthiest
communities and the street corners of our most devastated inner cities,"
Hastert said.

The U.S. assistance is part of Pastrana's $7.5 billion "Plan Colombia,"
designed to end decades of civil war, fight drug trafficking, strengthen
the judicial system and revive an economy in the doldrums.

Pastrana called the U.S. assistance "a recognition that the menace of
illegal drugs is truly international and therefore requires a concerted
global response."

Security was heavy for Clinton's entourage wherever it traveled in this
Caribbean port city. Snipers stood atop buildings at the airport, and armed
security guards stood watch in patrol boats.

The largest part of the $1.3 billion U.S. contribution to Plan Colombia is
for military assistance, including 60 helicopters to be used mostly by the
Colombian army in eradicating the lucrative drug crop. The United States
already has about 100 soldiers in Colombia to train counternarcotics
battalions of the Colombian army.

Clinton dismissed predictions by some in the United States that he is
starting down the path of an open-ended military commitment in a nation
that has been mired in a guerrilla war for more than three decades.

"A condition of this aid is that we will not get into a shooting war,"
Clinton said. "This is not Vietnam, neither is it Yankee imperialism. Those
are two of the false charges that have been hurled at Plan Colombia," he said.