HOUSE PASSES BILL TO AID COLOMBIAN BATTLE OVER DRUGS

Also Pays Storm Victims, Pentagon

WASHINGTON -- Leaders resolved a last-minute snag yesterday and whisked
through the House an $11.2 billion emergency package bearing money for
Colombia's drug war, the Pentagon and storm victims at home.

Months in the making, the bill was approved by a bipartisan vote of
306-110. The Senate was all but certain to give it final approval today,
when Congress' Fourth of July break is scheduled to begin.

Signaling that he would sign the measure, President Clinton said afterward,
"While it contains certain flaws, in total this bill will make our nation
safer and more secure by meeting essential and long-overdue needs at home
and abroad."

The last impasse was broken after House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill.,
relented and agreed to keep language off the bill lifting food sanctions
against Cuba. Senate opponents who said it did not liberalize trade enough
had threatened to derail the entire spending bill unless it was free of the
sanctions language.

The Cuba provision, worked out earlier this week between farm-state and
anti-Castro lawmakers, will now await inclusion in the final version of an
agriculture spending bill later this summer, aides said.

The highlight of the emergency package was $1.3 billion to help Colombia
battle drug producers and their heavily armed guerrilla allies, who control
much of the southern part of the country. Clinton and Hastert made that aid
a priority as part of an effort to stanch the flow of Colombian cocaine and
heroin into the United States.

Their combined drive for the money overcame opposition by members of both
parties. Opponents cited allegations of Colombian human rights abuses, fear
of U.S. involvement in an unwinnable, four-decade-long conflict, and a
preference to use the money for drug prevention programs at home.

"A profound mistake," is how Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., described the
Colombian aid.

Most of that money is for purchasing 60 Blackhawk and Huey helicopters for
the Colombians, training and equipping counternarcotics battalions, and
intelligence activity. There also would be money for human rights programs
in Colombia, for Bolivia, Ecuador and other nearby countries, and for U.S.
aircraft performing anti-drug surveillance.

The election-year bill was packed with hundreds of millions of dollars for
lawmakers' home districts. The House and Senate each allotted $105 million
for members' projects.

A pair of U.S. Senate candidates -- Reps. Rick Lazio, R-N.Y., and Bob
Franks, R-N.J. -- had projects to boast about. Lazio was trumpeting $6
million for homeless shelters nationwide, part of which was going for a
veterans' shelter in Buffalo, N.Y. Franks won $41 million for New Jersey
communities damaged by floods spawned by September's Hurricane Floyd.

There also was $500,000 to extend a bicycle path in the northern Virginia
district of Rep. James Moran, D-Va.

The bill included $2 billion to repay the Pentagon for the costs of 5,700
U.S. members of the NATO peacekeeping team in Kosovo. There also was $4.4
billion more for fuel, health care and other Pentagon programs.

There was $661 million for rebuilding from the government-set fires that
ravaged Los Alamos, N.M., and about $360 million to help North Carolina and
other states recover from Hurricane Floyd and other agricultural problems.