COLOMBIA AID PLAN BOOST QUESTIONED

President Clinton plans to visit Colombia on Aug. 30 to promote U.S. support
for Colombia's war on drugs. Then-President George Bush made a similar trip
in 1990, and the passage of a decade reminds us of how little has changed.

Despite longstanding U.S. aid to Colombia for prosecution of drug
traffickers, Colombia continues to produce about three-fourths of the
world's cocaine and an increasing share of the heroin used in the United
States. Skeptics can reasonably wonder what Clinton can do to change things.

Clinton's answer is to provide Colombia with much the same kind of aid, only
more of it. Clinton's ambitious $1.3 billion assistance package marks a
tenfold increase in U.S. funds to promote good government, judicial reform,
human rights protection and economic development.

About two-thirds of the aid will go directly to Colombia, with the rest used
for anti-drug support programs in the region, such as improvements to
landing areas used by anti-narcotics spy planes and to law enforcement
programs in neighboring countries.

Much of the U.S. aid will be used to train Colombian military units assigned
to drug duty. Clinton has given strong support to Colombia's drug war,
persuading Congress to approve the huge aid package earlier this summer. To
underscore bipartisan support for his policy, Clinton will be joined on his
visit to Colombia by U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and U.S.
Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del.

We have two major concerns about Clinton's aid package to Colombia. Most
notably, it dramatically increases foreign aid to a country with a long
history of squandering U.S. aid through corruption and inefficiency. We
believe that the United States needs stronger assurances that its money is
being well spent before it increases aid to Colombia.

Second, the military component of the aid package, while ostensibly aimed at
helping Colombia's armed forces with drug interdiction, could end up being
applied to helping Colombian soldiers battle government rebels. That's
because the interests of the drug traffickers and the rebels often are
intertwined.

Do we want U.S. taxpayers so directly involved in Colombia's civil war? If
so, we should declare such intentions clearly, rather than support a drug
interdiction program that could slowly and almost imperceptibly entangle us
in a war we don't want to fight.

Finally, we would like to reaffirm our previously stated position on the
general principle of anti-drug aid to foreign governments. Such assistance
has its place. But in the long run, the biggest hope for success in fighting
illegal drug traffic will come from reducing U.S. demand, not fighting the
supply from abroad.