U.S. AID & COLOMBIAN BLOOD

Early Sunday morning, a group of 60 armed men entered a poor neighborhood
in the town of Cienaga, on Colombia's Caribbean coast. The gunmen, who
police say carried a list of people they were seeking, kidnapped 10
residents from their homes, dragged them to an isolated part of town,
interrogated them, then executed them.

Before dispatching their victims, the killers accused them of collaborating
with left-wing guerrillas who operate in the area, witnesses told Colombian
newspapers.

The massacre in Cienaga was just one of four that occurred this past
weekend.

In another attack, men dressed in military fatigues and wearing the
insignias of the right-wing Colombian Self-Defense Group entered a
discotheque in the Cauca region near Cali and executed three patrons. The
gunmen then invaded a nearby housing project, where they killed another
four people.

All told, 28 people lost their lives in the latest weekend of this
hemisphere's oldest civil war. Most of the 35,000 deaths so far, according
to human rights groups, have come at the hands of the Colombian Army or
civilian death squads linked to it.

Cienaga is not very far from the city of Cartagena, where President Clinton
will meet tomorrow with Colombian President Andres Pastrana.

Amid big fanfare -- and even bigger security -- Clinton will inaugurate a
$1.3 billion, two-year aid package for Colombia's war against drugs. That
is more than all the military aid our country will give to the rest of
Latin America.

Most of the money and the 60 U.S. helicopters that are part of the package
will go to the Colombian Army, which has the worst human rights record in
the hemisphere.

When he signed the bill authorizing the aid last week, Clinton could not
avoid the question of why so much largess for a bunch of thugs. He didn't
even pretend to try. He simply waived the requirement by Congress that
Colombia show progress on its human rights record.

The army will use the aid against the cocoa-growing and drug-processing
areas of the south. It will be helped in this by more than 100 U.S. Special
Forces soldiers who are in the country to train special battalions.

The south also happens to be the area where the Revolutionary Armed Forces
of Colombia, known as the FARC, the most potent insurgent group in the
country, has its strongest base.

The army, we are told, will not be targeting the northern part of the
country, where the right-wing death squads, which also have extensive links
to the drug trade, operate.

Right here in Queens, where most of the city's Colombians live, the effects
of the escalation of Colombia's civil war can already be seen.

"Middle-class professionals are leaving the country in droves," said Arturo
Sanchez, a Colombian-born professor at Pratt Institute, who has been
studying the migration of his countrymen.

Many of the new migrants are fleeing the political troubles and the
economic crisis that has accompanied those troubles, Sanchez said. Nearly 2
million Colombians have been internally displaced by the war, and more than
10% of Colombia's 33 million people now live abroad, mostly in the United
States, Venezuela, Ecuador, Spain -- and even in Japan.

But sending military aid and advisers is not the solution.

"This could be the beginning of another Vietnam," Sanchez said.

Last Friday night, nearly 200 Colombian immigrants packed the public
library in Corona. They came to listen to Ignacio Gomez, one of Colombia's
most respected investigative journalists, and the local leaders of the
Movement for Peace in Colombia.

One speaker after another condemned the Clinton aid package.

Down south, every country bordering Colombia is sending troops to the
border. Each is worried sick about the Special Forces and all that military
aid -- and what it could bring.

This is like the rerun of a terrible movie. You'd think somebody in
Washington would know what the Colombians in Queens already know. The end
of this will not be good.