COLOMBIAN HUMAN RIGHTS GROUP WANTS NO PART OF U.S. PLAN TO FIGHT DRUGS

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- Colombian human rights groups have rejected offers
to take part in a U.S.-financed plan to fight drug production, saying it
envisions spending too much on the military and not enough on social
problems.

A coalition of rights groups turned down U.S. appeals to support President
Andres Pastrana's "Plan Colombia," which is being partially funded with $1.3
billion in aid from the United States.

U.S. Under Secretary of State Thomas Pickering said last week that the
anti-drug plan would rely on Colombian human rights and other
non-governmental organizations for advice on how to spend millions in aid
money.

But representatives from 37 human rights and other non-governmental
organizations on Friday signed a statement in which they rejected Pastrana's
initiative.

"We have ethical and political difficulties receiving aid from this
program," said Fernan Gonzalez, director of the Jesuit-run Center for
Investigations and Popular Education. "Under these conditions, we would not
accept the resources the program will provide." The group's statement said
the aid "will not resolve Colombia's drug problems" because it assumes
Colombia's "national security is based exclusively on a strategy to fight
drugs and not on this country's social and armed conflict."

The organizations faulted Plan Colombia because its total projected $7.5
billion budget earmarks a little less than $2 billion for social and
economic development in areas where the economy depends on cocaine
production -- not enough, they say.

The statement came a week after about 100 elite U.S. troops arrived in
Colombia as part of the plan and began training an anti-narcotics battalion
near guerrilla territory.

Most of the U.S. funds will go toward providing 60 combat helicopters, which
are to be used to ferry U.S.-trained troops into drug-producing areas where
leftist rebels and right-wing paramilitary groups are active. The troops are
to seize the areas and allow planes to destroy drug crops by aerial spraying
without being shot down.

The United States is also dedicating some $51 million to strengthening
Colombia's democracy and improve human rights, $13 million to improving
Colombia's judicial system and $3 million to further the peace process.

In a separate development, Colombian students on a field trip were caught in
a cross fire between government troops and leftist rebels Tuesday and six
children were killed, authorities said.

The rebels were from the National Liberation Army, or ELN, Colombia's
second-largest guerrilla group, said Alfredo Salgado, assistant director of
Colombia's national police force.

The group of children was on a trip with two of their teachers in the
mountain municipality of Pueblorrico, 150 miles northwest of the capital,
Bogota.