CLINTON OFFERS AID, TRIES TO BOOST PASTRANA

Amid heightened security after a fresh wave of violence Tuesday, President
Clinton flies to Colombia Wednesday in a show of support for that
government's efforts to regain control of a country all but run by drug
traffickers and rebels.

Clinton's 8-hour visit to the coastal resort city of Cartagena, where
intense security will involve helicopters and warships, comes a week after
he stirred controversy at home by releasing $1.3 billion in aid to help the
military employ an anti-narcotics drive against armed rebels and drug
cartels.

In releasing the money, Clinton angered congressional Democrats by waiving
human rights conditions that Congress put on the aid.

White House national security adviser Samuel Berger described Colombia as
being in "a life-or-death struggle" to preserve its democracy in the face
of kidnappings - 2,500 in this past year - extortion, massacres by
paramilitaries and insurgents and drug trafficking to fund an
every-increasing crime wave. Colombia is the world's leading cocaine
exporter and a growing source of heroin sold on U.S. streets. What's more,
Colombians face a 20% unemployment rate.

The U.S. aid will be part of an ambitious $7.4 billion plan known as Plan
Colombia. Beleaguered President Andres Pastrana instituted the plan to
fight drug trafficking, bolster the nation's crippled economy, protect
human rights and seek peace with leftist rebels who rose up against the
state 36 years ago.

Polls show Pastrana has little public support. He is hoping Clinton, who is
traveling with Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert, will give him a
needed boost.

Analysts warn that Clinton's aid package will only escalate Colombia's
conflict, since U.S. aid will likely push the rebels to fight back harder
against the military. The conflict has claimed 35,000 lives in the past
decade.

The money will pay for training and equipping Colombian army anti-narcotics
battalions in an effort to recapture from the rebels vast areas in the
south, which are virtually carpeted in coca plantations. But many
Colombians worry that the strategy will backfire since protecting the drug
trade is a nearly $500 million business for the rebels.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the nation's most
powerful insurgency, sees the visit as the start of U.S. military
intervention in Colombia. Plan Colombia "is a pretext for other plans that
are clearly interventionist," FARC spokesman Andres Paris said.

But in remarks televised Tuesday night to the Colombian people, Clinton
said: "Please do not misunderstand our purpose. We have no military
objective. We support the peace process."

Non-governmental organizations and regional leaders also have blasted the
military focus of the U.S.-backed plan to eradicate drug crops. They say
that cutting the drug supply from Colombia must begin with social programs
for peasants who grow the illegal crops to survive.

"It can't be just about eradicating coca. There has to be alternative
development," said Jorge Devia, governor of Putumayo province, where U.S.
trained anti-narcotics battalions will work.

Meanwhile, human rights groups called on Clinton to pressure Pastrana to
stop human rights abuses by the military. Clinton's trip, said Jose Miguel
Vivanco of Human Rights Watch, is only "reinforcing bad apples in the
military."

Pastrana, who also plans to seek new trade preferences for his nation's
legal exports during Clinton's visit, will show off Cartagena, a Caribbean
coastal town that has remained an oasis of tranquility in a violence-racked
land.

Tuesday, rebels set off bombs outside three banks and masked students
rioted to protest Clinton's visit. But none of the violence took place in
Cartagena, which is being protected by 5,000 police officers.

"This is the only city that is free from political violence," says Michael,
who ekes out a living renting chairs and selling beer

on Cartagena's beaches. He refused to give his surname. "But we are not
free from the poverty."

A few miles from where Clinton will be touring the old city, thousands of
squatters, many who have fled violence in other parts of the country,
huddle in a sprawling neighborhood known as "Nelson Mandela," where they
have made homes out of scrap plywood and sheets of corrugated zinc.

"It's a shame Clinton will not come here so he can see the other face of
Colombia, not the one they are painting for him in the old city," said
community leader Angel Lobo, one of Colombia's more than 1 million internal
refugees. "If he did, maybe he would give us money for peace instead of
war."

But Clinton said the U.S. aid includes money for economic development,
judicial reform, human rights, school construction and water systems and
roads. "We see in President Pastrana a man who has risked his life to take
on the drug traffickers, who was kidnapped by the Medellin (cartel), but
who kept speaking out," Clinton said. "As president, he has continued to
risk his life to help heal his country. "