U.S. OFFICIAL IS FACING MONSTER JOB OF FIGHTING COLOMBIAN DRUG WAR

Despite Challenges, McCaffrey Optimistic About Overseeing $1.3 Billion
Aid Package

CARTAGENA, Colombia (AP) -- Barry McCaffrey, a retired four-star U.S.
Army general who has led Washington's war on drugs for the past five
years, is facing one of his toughest battles yet.

He is overseeing a controversial $1.3 billion U.S. aid package to
Colombia that includes combat helicopters, weapons and training by the
elite U.S. Special Forces -- all part of an effort to stanch the flow
of drugs out of a country riven by war, death squads and drug lords.

Despite the scale of the task before him, McCaffrey remains optimistic.

"There's a widespread belief on the part of a lot of very smart people
that confronting drug production in Colombia is obviously impossible
and therefore why should you start," McCaffrey said in an interview
this week in Colombia. "But the situation here is not hopeless."

McCaffrey and U.S. Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering met
Thursday with Colombian President Andres Pastrana to work out the final
details of the aid package.

Most of the money will go to supply this Andean nation with about 100
U.S. military advisers, 60 combat helicopters, weapons, and
miscellaneous hardware for its war on drug producers.

But the plan, approved by Congress and signed by President Clinton last
month, also includes more than $400 million for nonmilitary programs,
such as encouraging farmers to plant alternative crops.

Specific use of those funds has yet to be worked out, U.S. officials
said.

Pastrana, who has an approval rating of barely 30 percent, is trying to
gain the upper hand in a 36-year war against more than 26,000 leftist
guerrillas who reportedly earn at least $370 million a year from their
drug-protection racket.

Adding to the violence, right-wing paramilitary units kill guerrillas
and civilians suspected of being leftist sympathizers.

Armed groups across the spectrum, as well as common criminals, kidnap
some 3,000 people a year for ransom. Indeed, leftist rebels this week
seized about two dozen biological researchers, including an American,
John Douglas Lynch, recently retired from the faculty of the University
of Nebraska.

And -- despite Washington's efforts over the years -- Colombian drug
production has increased.

The country supplies the vast majority of the world's cocaine. It also
supplies most of the heroin sold on the East Coast of the United States
and now ranks fourth in the world in overall production, U.S. officials
say.

Bogota has stepped up its cooperation with Washington on the drug
front. On Thursday, Pastrana signed an order to extradite one of his
country's most powerful and ruthless drug traffickers to the United
States for trial.

Alberto Orlandez Gamboa is wanted by U.S. prosecutors for importing
thousands of pounds of cocaine to the United States. His lawyer said he
will keep fighting the extradition.

And as McCaffrey helps coordinate the unfolding of Washington's costly
assistance to Colombia, human rights groups worry that the U.S.
military is getting too friendly with an army that may ignore or even
encourage attacks on civilians by right-wing death squads.

Other critics say they see the early stages of Vietnam all over again.
Still others are concerned that aerial spraying of pesticides on crops
of coca and poppy could harm Colombia's environment -- and the health
of its citizens.

While McCaffrey rejected those points, he conceded that U.S. aid
initiative is not perfect. But he said he believes it is necessary.

"This is a huge, beautiful country with 40 million people whom we
admire ... and who are sick of the drugs and the violence here," he
said.