SENATE SUCKED INTO $1BN COCAINE DEAL

The Senate's approval last week of a controversial $1 billion aid package
for the Colombian military is more a victory for the art of public relations
than it is in the fight against drugs.

Critics have raised the prospect of America being sucked into a futile
Vietnam-style entanglement in Latin America a decade after disengaging
itself from the volatile region's guerrilla wars.

A charm offensive by Andres Pastrana, Colombia's president, who is
co-ordinating a difficult campaign to eradicate production of coca, the
plant whose leaves are used for making cocaine, has helped to allay such
fears.

Colombian officials have made 46 visits to Washington in two years to
enlighten congressmen about the brutality of left-wing guerrilla
organisations and right-wing paramilitary groups battling for control of
hundreds of millions of dollars in drug profits.

At the same time Pastrana, the democratically elected English-speaking
president, has played host to some 50 visiting American congressmen who were
afraid of stumbling into another El Salvador, where charges of human rights
abuses by American-financed forces turned into a political embarrassment. He
has flown them over coca-growing regions and invited them to dinner with his
wife and children.

Names of 900 members of a new Colombian anti-drug battalion being trained by
America are being run through Central Intelligence Agency databases to check
for past human rights violations or links to crime. They are also being
subjected to lie-detector tests.

"We don't want doubts about any of the people we've selected," said Colonel
Mario Correa, the Colombian army's chief of personnel.

Pastrana has agreed that American officials can review each mission to
ensure the 60 helicopters provided are used only in fighting the drug war
and not in counter-insurgency operations, although some suggest the former
cannot be accomplished without the latter, so closely are the drug producers
involved with guerrillas.

One of the biggest guerrilla groups has called the military aid a
"declaration of war".

"The aid is going to stimulate the war," said Alejo Vargas, a Colombian
political analyst. "The drug crops will just be moved elsewhere."