AS PROBLEMS MOUNT, COLOMBIA'S PRESIDENT SHUFFLES HIS CABINET

RIO DE JANEIRO, July 11 -- In an effort to revive the Colombian
government's sharply declining political and economic fortunes,
President Andres Pastrana replaced more than a third of his cabinet
today, bringing in several figures associated with opposition parties
in hopes of dampening their campaign to cripple his government. The
long-anticipated cabinet shuffle comes as the Clinton administration
is poised to begin delivering an emergency $1.3 billion aid package,
composed mostly of military assistance, to Colombia and neighboring
countries. The money is intended to slow a huge increase in cocaine
and heroin production and thereby weaken the finances of
Marxist-Leninist guerrilla groups that have been fighting the
Colombian government since the mid-1960's.

"This is a cabinet of national unity, of great openness," said
Minister of the Interior Humberto de la Calle, himself a member of the
opposition Liberal Party who took office barely three months ago. Of
the 22 posts in the cabinet, slightly more than half are now held by
members of Mr. Pastrana's Conservative Party, with the rest in the
hands of Liberals and independents.

Nine changes were announced as a result of the the shakeup, which
began Friday night with the resignation of Minister of Finance Juan
Camilo Restrepo. Planning Director Mauricio Cardenas and Minister of
Economic Development Jaime Cabal Sanclemente stepped down today,
meaning that all three of the government's top economic leaders will
be new.

The shuffle did not, though, affect the two officials who have the
most contact with the United States and are most closely identified
with the American aid package, part of a larger $7.5 billion
counter-narcotics and social support program that Mr. Pastrana calls
"Plan Colombia." Luis Fernando Ramirez Acuna remains as minister of
defense, while Guillermo Fernandez de Soto continues in the foreign
affairs portfolio.

But the composition of the restructured cabinet pitches the Pastrana
government somewhat further to the left. The new minister of labor,
Angelino Garzon, for instance, is a former president of the country's
largest trade union federation and was also a vice president of the
Patriotic Union, a leftist political coalition with links to leftist
guerrillas that was all but wiped out by paramilitary death squads in
the late 1980's and early 1990's.

"We consider Angelino Garzon to be a friend of the labor movement and
wish him success in his new post," Julio Roberto Gomez, president of
the General Confederation of Democratic Workers, a labor group that
has often quarreled with Mr. Pastrana, told a local radio station. "We
regard his appointment as a piece of good news."

Mr. Pastrana took office two years ago next month with the highest
vote total ever recorded by a candidate for president of Colombia. But
he has been weakened, among other things, by an apparent lack of
progress in peace negotiations with the two main guerrilla groups and
by what economic analysts describe as the worst recession in a
century, with unemployment at 20 percent and the peso at an all-time
low against the dollar.

Hoping to arrest that decline, this spring he proposed a referendum to
replace Congress, which is dominated by the Liberals and is widely
seen as corrupt and ineffective, with a new and more-streamlined body.
But the plan backfired, and Mr. Pastrana was left with a poisoned
relationship with Congress and a diminished ability to govern, after
legislators suggested that the president's job be put to a vote as
well.