TROUBLES BUILD AS COLOMBIANS AWAIT NEW AID

BOGOTA, Colombia, - The United States is committing more than
$1 billion to Colombia's struggle against drug production and
trafficking just as the government here is stumbling politically and
the national police chief who did most to win American trust in his
country's efforts has stepped down.

The American aid package, likely to total $1.3 billion after the
Senate approved it on Wednesday, foresees reduced reliance on the
115,000-member National Police and places greater emphasis on the
armed forces. But the retiring police chief, Gen. Rosso Jose Serrano,
and his men would never have been called upon to lead the
counternarcotics fight had Washington not harbored grave doubts about
the fighting ability and human rights record of the Colombian armed
forces.

And President Andres Pastrana, approaching the midpoint of his
four-year term, is increasingly criticized and has lost key aides,
including his interior minister, chief of staff and chief negotiator
with the armed rebels who have taken over drug production here. Public
patience with the president's failure to make a deal with leftist
guerrillas who have been battling the government for decades is
wearing thin.

General Serrano, 58, was praised by his supporters on Capitol Hill as
"the best cop in the world." He stepped down on Friday, having
announced this month that he was retiring because "I have been to so
many police officers' funerals that I can't bear another."

Some 2,000 police officers have been killed since 1994 in this
country, which has a murder rate about 10 times higher than that of
the United States and, with more than 3,000 abductions in 1999, the
highest kidnapping rate in the world. Many people here are convinced
that the drug war is being waged at the expense of their own security.

"The aggravation of drug trafficking and the armed conflict have
translated into the police directing their priorities to the defense
of the state and its institutions," said Alvaro Camacho, director of
the Institute of Political Studies at the National University.

As a result, he said, the police's "role of supporting the citizenry
has been debilitated" and they "have become an actor in the war,
separated from the civilian population."

Perhaps because of such sentiments, Colombia's defense minister, Luis
Fernando Ramirez, applauds Washington's decision to step up its
involvement in Colombia's battle against drugs as "a new beginning."

The strategy underlying the aid package, which President Clinton is
expected to sign early next month, calls for greater use of the
Colombian armed forces in "source interdiction" and envisions a
reduced role for the police.

The primary burden of fighting the drug war will now fall on three new
antinarcotics battalions created in the armed forces with American
money and training. Mr. Ramirez, in an interview at his Defense
Ministry headquarters on Friday, dismissed any doubts that these new
units are ready to do battle with the leftist guerrillas and
right-wing paramilitary units that now play dominant roles in the drug
trade.

"The United States has a dilemma," he said. "Either it can give us the
tools and let us do the job, or the international community takes
charge of a problem that is growing out of hand. I think the United
States has made the correct decision by giving us the tools we need to
do our work."

"I see a transition taking place without much trauma," Mr. Ramirez
said of General Serrano's retirement. "It is basically the same team
of generals in antinarcotics and the other areas, very much trained by
Serrano and very much in line with the way we have been working" since
Mr. Pastrana took office nearly two years ago.

However, General Serrano is stepping down as many of the spectacular
gains made against drug trafficking early in his five-and-a-half-year
tenure have been erased. Cocaine production has more than doubled in
the last five years despite an American-financed program of spraying
from the air to eradicate coca crops -- a program that is supposed to
expand significantly when American Blackhawk and Huey helicopters, the
most costly items in the new aid package, begin arriving in the next
few months.

General Serrano's personal popularity, based on his folksy manner and
image of integrity, had dissolved much of the popular discontent over
lawlessness and bolstered American confidence in Colombia's ability to
fight its end of the narcotics war, which is fed by drug use and
addiction in the United States.

The general organized and led the raids that smashed the Cali cartel
and imprisoned scores of other drug traffickers on Washington's
most-wanted list. He also dismissed 11,400 of his own officers,
turning what had been a corrupt and often brutal force into a tough
and trim fighting unit that the United States cultivated as a welcome
alternative to an incompetent army and the cartel-financed presidency
of Ernesto Samper, Mr. Pastrana's predecessor.

"Serrano delivered the goods and in many ways was a moral leader for
Colombia at a time the country badly needed one, and he was tireless
and entirely committed to the antinarcotics fight," said Myles
Frechette, who was the United States ambassador here during the late
1990's. "We had so much trust in him that we dealt with him as if he
were one of us."

Indeed, General Serrano's standing in Washington has remained so high
that his superiors, to their dismay and occasional annoyance, have
often been eclipsed.

When Mr. Pastrana visited Washington last year to lobby for American
aid and was rebuked by Republican members of Congress for not having
brought General Serrano with him, he had to remind his hosts that "I
am the president of Colombia."

As General Serrano's successor, Mr. Pastrana has chosen Gen. Luis
Ernesto Gilibert Vargas, 57. The grandson of a French police officer
sent to Colombia in 1891 to organize the National Police, General
Gilibert has a personal commitment to the institution that is
unquestioned, but was described by a European diplomat here as being
"more cautious and less charismatic" than General Serrano.

"One of Serrano's great talents," Mr. Frechette said, "is that he
really knew how to deal with Americans and had an understanding of the
international situation that the military still doesn't have."

At least at first, Mr. Frechette predicted, "there will be adjustment
pains" for the Drug Enforcement Administration in adapting to a
different operating style under General Gilibert, "who is very
competent but doesn't know how to handle Americans as Serrano did."

Since his appointment was announced, General Gilibert has made it
clear he wants the police force to concentrate more on making
Colombians feel more secure at home, at work and on the streets. The
implication is that there will be less of a focus on the fight against
drug trafficking, as General Gilibert acknowledged in remarks to
reporters here last week.

"That doesn't mean we are going to forget about this theme," he said.
"But at these moments there are other priorities."

Currently, Mr. Ramirez said, "we have 195 municipalities in Colombia
that are without a police presence" because "their barracks have been
destroyed by guerrillas" in armed confrontations. With political
pressure building on Mr. Pastrana not to step up the drug war to the
detriment of public security, "we are going to have to make an extra
effort in the Colombian budget" to support conventional police duties,
he said.