COLOMBIA PRESIDENT RAPS U.S. DRUG USE

CARTAGENA, Colombia - President Andres Pastrana said Tuesday that Colombia
cannot put a dent in international drug trafficking until the United States
and other countries do much more to control their people's appetite for
drugs.

``Colombia can put a stop to drugs here at some point, but if the demand
continues, somebody else somewhere else in the world is going to produce
them,'' Pastrana said in an interview at a restored monastery that overlooks
the cannon-studded colonial walls that once protected this port from English
and French pirates. ``We are already getting intelligence reports of
possible plantings in Africa.''

``What we are talking about is the most lucrative business in the world,''
he added, ``unless the recent spike in oil prices has made it the
second-most-lucrative business in the world.''

To be sure, reducing the South American drug trade has proven a difficult
and complex matter, and drug-producing nations have long made the same
contentions. But Pastrana's wary words seemed to strike a dissonant note,
coming on the eve of President Clinton's arrival here today, when the
leaders are to open a $7.5 billion plan to address the spreading trafficking
problem in Colombia.

The joint plan aims to cut coca plantings here by 50 percent in five years
through a combination of military pressure, plant eradication and social
reforms.

Clinton's visit will be the first by a U.S. president in 11 years, and it
had been seen here as a triumph for Pastrana's presidency, now at the
midpoint of his four-year term.

The plan includes $1.3 billion in aid to train and outfit a Colombian
anti-drug brigade to support police efforts in eradicating coca and in
halting the processing and shipment of coca and cocaine in two southern
provinces that are largely controlled by Colombia's largest guerrilla group.

Regional leaders have expressed fears that the plan will widen the guerrilla
war and spill refugees and coca plants across the Brazilian, Ecuadorean and
Peruvian borders. Clinton and Pastrana will attempt to counter those
concerns with clear public commitments for more alternative agricultural
development and with relief for coca growers who lose their illegal
livelihoods.

Clinton tried Tuesday to ease local concerns about U.S. intervention in a
videotaped message to Colombians.

``Please do not misunderstand our purpose,'' he said. ``We have no military
objective. Let me be clear about the role of the United States. First, it is
not for us to propose a plan. We are supporting the Colombian plan.''

As a former television journalist and the son of a former president,
Pastrana has a casual charisma. But rising unemployment and stalled peace
talks with Marxist rebel groups that control large chunks of the nation
where the drug industry is spreading have made him an unpopular president.

It is not easy to be optimistic in a country where the government has lost
control of half of its territory, 2 million people have been displaced and
parents of means buy bullet-proof vests for their children.

He said he was confident that the guerrillas could be persuaded to negotiate
a peace and even to encourage volunteer eradication of coca crops by peasant
farmers.

He also said the United States should play a more active role in the peace
efforts, to encourage the guerrillas to join the fight against drugs

Pastrana said the United States could go a long way toward helping him
revive a lagging economy by granting Colombia trade preferences. He
suggested that Colombia could join the United States, Mexico and Canada in
the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Pastrana said the United States had come a long way from viewing the drug
traffic as merely ``a police problem'' and to understanding it as a social
disease that requires a multipronged effort to resolve.