COLOMBIA TO PRESS CLINTON ON TRADE

CARTAGENA, Colombia (AP) - Colombia plans to press President Clinton during
a visit this week for trade benefits to complement a $1.3 billion U.S. aid
package to help fight drug trafficking, the country's foreign minister said.

``More than aid, which of course we need, we also need better trade terms,''
Foreign Minister Guillermo Fernandez said in an interview with The
Associated Press, outlining his government's plan to press for lower U.S.
tariffs on imports of Colombian clothing and textiles.

Colombia argues that such trade benefits will indirectly help curb drug
production in the world's leading cocaine-exporting nation by providing
legal jobs for people currently involved in the drug trade. A program
allowing Colombia and its Andean neighbors to export flowers duty-free to
the United States has created tens of thousands of jobs, while angering U.S.
flower growers.

Much of the talk during Clinton's visit Wednesday will be about a planned
Colombian military offensive into drug-producing regions dominated by
leftist rebels.

A $1.3 billion U.S. aid package provides U.S. military training for
Colombian army troops who will try to gain control of the coca fields and
then eradicate crops and destroy drug laboratories.

Clinton is also expected to ask President Andres Pastrana to take steps to
reduce human rights abuses, including massacres committed by right-wing
paramilitary groups with alleged ties to the military.

In the interview Friday, Fernandez also stressed the importance of U.S. aid
for so-called ``alternative development'' projects to help poor peasants
switch from growing coca and opium poppies to legal crops. Only about a
tenth of the money in the U.S. aid plan is destined for social programs.

Neighboring countries, especially Ecuador and Peru, have expressed concern
that the planned military strike into southern Colombia will send rebels and
refugees fleeing across their borders.

However, Fernandez said the anti-narcotics push will be accompanied by ``the
largest social investments Colombia has ever made in these areas to avoid
that phenomenon.'' He said 70 percent of the government's expenditures to
fight drug trafficking and restore economic growth will be spent on social
investments.

The foreign minister also downplayed any environmental damage to the Amazon
basin from herbicides used to eradicate illegal drug crops.

``What is producing the real ecological damage is the alliance between drug
trafficking and the guerrillas,'' Fernandez said.