NEIGHBORS WORRY ABOUT COLOMBIAN AID

BOGOTA, Colombia, Aug. 24 -- As President Clinton prepares to visit
Colombia next week and open the spigot of military aid, the country's
neighbors are expressing concerns that a step-up in the fighting here could
push coca growing, drug trafficking, refugees and even fighting across
their borders.

The Colombian conflict has already led to guerrilla incursions into Panama
and Venezuela for safe haven.

United States military officials warn that one Colombian rebel group
already exerts influence over Indian dissidents in Ecuador, and new
Colombian plantings of coca and poppies have been reported in Peru.

But leaders around the region say that the nature of the war is about to
change with the release of $1.3 billion in new American aid over the next
two years to train and equip an antinarcotics army brigade and that the
impact on their nations is likely to increase.

The brigade will be outfitted with 60 helicopters that will support police
efforts to eradicate the coca fields and shut down trafficking operations
in two southern Colombian provinces largely controlled by the Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the biggest rebel faction.

Whether or not the rebels stand and fight to support the coca growers and
traffickers, whose protection money finances their war effort, tens of
thousands of coca growers are likely to move far and wide, taking their
seedlings and guerrilla protection with them.

That was the message Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright heard from
nervous Ecuadorean and Brazilian leaders on her trip through South America
last week. It was repeated when Ecuador's President, Gustavo Noboa, came to
Bogota on Wednesday to ask President Andres Pastrana that his government be
kept informed of all military operations in southern Colombia so the
Ecuadorean Army could prepare for any incursions of coca growers, refugees
or guerrillas across its frontier.

"Our worry is that the removal of this cancerous tumor will cause it to
metastasize into Ecuador," Ecuador's foreign minister, Heinz Moeller, told
Colombian reporters on Wednesday. He noted that successful efforts by Peru
and Bolivia to eradicate coca plantings in recent years encouraged more
cultivation in Colombia, worsening this country's drug problem while having
little impact on world cocaine supplies.

United States officials call it the "balloon effect," when they succeed in
attacking drug activity in one country or region, only to see it pop up
again in some other place. They note that when the Central Intelligence
Agency and the Drug Enforcement Administration succeeded in helping the
police in Colombia arrest the leaders of the Cali drug cartel several years
ago, other organizations emerged elsewhere in the country to take the
cartel's place and the flood of drug exports continued. These new
organizations, weaker then their predecessor, sought protection from the
Colombian guerrillas and have pumped up their powers with large financial
support.

Even Peru's president, Alberto K. Fujimori, who took a hard line against
guerrillas in his country in the early 1990's, told reporters this week
that he was concerned that an escalation of the fighting in Colombia "could
generate a wider conflict, one in which the FARC retreats into Peruvian
territory."

United States and Colombian officials are trying to assuage Latin American
leaders, arguing that the new military effort in southern Colombia -- which
is part of a broader national military and humanitarian effort called Plan
Colombia -- is an attempt to force the FARC to negotiate seriously in peace
talks, which have stalled in recent months.

"This is a peace plan, not a war plan," is how Foreign Minister Guillermo
46ernandez de Soto of Colombia characterizes his government's new
initiative to his regional colleagues.

Gen. Fernando Tapias, the chief of the Colombian armed forces, argued last
week that eradicating the coca fields in the Putumayo and Caqueta provinces
of Colombia would deprive the FARC of a source of hundreds of millions of
dollars a year, and hence its ability to make war.

"There will be peace, but first there will be war," he said in an interview
with the Brazilian newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo. "With or without Plan
Colombia, things are going to get worse."

On her trip last week, Dr. Albright offered Ecuador $15 million to help
Colombian refugees. Ecuadorean leaders publicly backed Plan Colombia,
despite their concerns, but Brazilian leaders told her they would not
contribute to the program.

"Brazil does not have the same level of commitment as the United States in
the program to fight drug trafficking in Colombia," said Brazil's foreign
minister, Luiz Felipe Lampreia.

Panama, which has not had an army since the United States invasion that
overthrew Gen. Manuel Noriega in 1989, has begun moving hundreds of police
officers to the Colombian border and has requested $30 million from
Washington to bolster efforts to defend itself from a growing number of
border incursions by Colombian guerrillas, drug traffickers and coca growers.

Brazil has also begun to reinforce its long, porous border with Colombia,
and is buying four French Cougar AS-532 helicopters to increase the
mobility of its border patrols. Peru has moved a fleet of MI-17 helicopters
from its border with Ecuador to its Colombian frontier in recent months.
And Venezuela, which has long complained of Colombian guerrilla incursions,
has also beefed up its border guard, which now stands at an estimated
25,000 troops.

Despite such preparations, there have been persistent reports that the
Colombian guerrillas have established cordial relations with President Hugo
Chavez of Venezuela, a populist who is critical of the United States role
in Latin American affairs. This week, one of the leading commanders of the
National Liberation Army, the second largest guerrilla group here,
announced that his force had reached a formal agreement with Venezuela that
included a cease-fire along the border.

Venezuela's foreign minister, Jose Vicente Rangel, denied that there was
any agreement with the guerrilla group, "whether tacit or explicit," though
he acknowledged that there had been contacts. But Mr. Rangel went on to say
that his government's concerns about an escalation of the four-decade-old
civil conflict in Colombia would be vigorously voiced at a meeting of Latin
American presidents in Brasilia on Aug. 31, the day after President
Clinton's eight-hour trip to Colombia to kick off Plan Colombia.

"There are inevitable and basic fears Venezuela shares with other
neighboring countries that when this plan is put into operation there will
be a flood of Colombian refugees moving toward the frontier zones," Mr.
Rangel told reporters this week.

The new American-supplied and trained antinarcotics brigade will not be
fully ready for combat until well into 2001. But there is already growing
evidence that the guerrillas are using the remote, permeable borders of
Colombia's neighbors to wage their war.

President Fujimori announced this week that Peruvian intelligence had
uncovered an international arms ring that had trafficked 10,000 Russian
assault rifles from Jordan through Peru and across the Colombian border to
FARC units. Mr. Fujimori charged that high Jordanian military officials
were involved in the operation, and among those arrested were two Peruvian
military officers.

"We're concerned," Mr. Fujimori said, "that these FARC arms shipments are
meant to counteract the military support the United States is now giving
Colombia."