U.S. TO HELP FUND COLOMBIAN MILITARY'S BATTLE AGAINST DRUG TRADE

WASHINGTON -- The United States is poised to plunge deeper into the conflict
in Colombia.

The Senate on Friday gave final approval to $1.3 billion in aid for the
Latin American nation, the bulk of it going to the Colombian military's
battle against drug traffickers and the leftist rebels and right-wing
paramilitaries who support them.

President Clinton, who will sign the measure, says U.S. military advisers,
weapons, helicopters and intelligence will be used only to help Colombian
troops smash an illicit industry that supplies 80 percent of the cocaine
sold in America.

But with the multibillion-dollar drug trade inseparable from Colombia's
four-decade guerrilla war, the United States risks being sucked into a
political conflict that has claimed tens of thousands of lives, mostly
civilians, and shows no sign of ending.

Washington has said it will not send ground troops. But having invested huge
sums of money and political prestige, it would be hard-pressed to cut off
its support before showing it had helped Colombia eradicate the production
of heroin and cocaine.

"It's not to suggest that the United States will eventually be involved in a
dramatic troop commitment in Colombia, but rather a military quagmire that
results from a misreading of the situation on the ground and a misleading of
the American public about the operation," said Winifred Tate of the
Washington Office on Latin America, a think tank that is often critical of
U.S. policy.

Critics are also concerned about forging closer ties between the United
States and a government mired in corruption and a military accused of human
rights abuses.

The aid package will help fund Plan Colombia, a three-year, $3.5 billion
strategy proposed by Colombian President Andres Pastrana to halt the
guerrilla conflict and terrorist violence, eliminate the drug trade and
kick-start his country's flagging economy.

The aid represents the largest U.S. involvement with a Latin American
military since the end of the Cold War, when Washington's support for
anti-communist regimes ignited outcries over alleged U.S. complicity in
coups, death squads and human rights abuses.

American officials say that three Colombian counter-narcotics battalions
being trained and armed by the United States have been thoroughly screened.
None of their members have been involved in human rights abuses or have
belonged to military units linked to right-wing paramilitary groups,
officials say. U.S. officials will be permitted to review the use of
American helicopters provided under the aid package to ensure that they are
flown only on counter-narcotics operations.

"With this funding, we will be able to support the courageous anti-drug
efforts of Colombia, which can, in turn, help curb the flow of drugs in our
nation," Clinton said.

The House approved the aid Thursday. It was part of an $11.2 billion
emergency appropriations bill that also contained money for the U.S.
peacekeeping force in Kosovo.

The Colombia program greatly increases counter-narcotics aid for the
Maryland-sized country of 39 million. It received $50 million in 1998 and
$309 million last year.

The program marks a major shift in American policy. The United States
previously awarded virtually all Colombian counter-narcotics assistance to
the national police. The bulk now will go to the military.

In addition to sending more American advisers to train the new
counter-narcotics battalions, the United States will provide 18 Blackhawk
and 42 Huey helicopters for ferrying the units into drug-growing regions and
spraying herbicide on coca and poppy fields.

Pushing into the jungles means tangling with the leftist rebels and
right-wing paramilitary groups who control large areas of the country.

Already the largest guerrilla outfit, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia, is promising to repulse the anti-drug offensive even as it
explores peace talks with U.N. and European envoys.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces this week said it would arm coca-growing
peasants and may even use ground-to-air missiles against the U.S.-supplied
helicopters in what would be a major escalation in the conflict.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces is one of three leftist rebel groups fighting
to topple Colombia's elected government. The rebels earn millions of dollars
by protecting drug production and taxing cultivation by impoverished
peasants who have for years been denied education and basic services by the
city of Bogota.

The rebels control an estimated 50 percent of Colombia. That fact and the
massive drug profits they earn give them little incentive to strike a peace
deal in talks that Pastrana has been pushing since his 1998 election.

To help it fight the rebels, the military has backed paramilitary groups
that have been blamed for most of the estimated 35,000 civilian deaths and
disappearances since 1987.

The paramilitaries also have little incentive to embrace peace as they, too,
are profiting from the drug trade, by protecting production labs and the
traffickers who smuggle heroin and cocaine north toward the United States.

Colombia, the source of half the world's cocaine, is already the largest
recipient of U.S. anti-drug assistance in Latin America. Among other
programs, Washington is funding the large-scale eradication of poppy and
coca crops by aerial spraying.

The fumigation has triggered charges of environmental damage and health
problems among people exposed to it.

There are already 250 to 300 U.S. military personnel, most of them special
forces, training Colombian personnel for counter-narcotics operations or
engaged in drug detection, monitoring and intelligence-gathering missions.

The Pentagon also operates five radar facilities in Colombia to detect drug
smugglers.