HOW COLOMBIA WOOED U.S. TO OPEN DRUG WAR

TRES ESQUINAS, Colombia -- A decade after the U.S. bowed out of Latin
America's guerrilla wars, it's ready to get back in.

The decision to try again here is testament to the political potency
of the war on drugs, but that alone wouldn't be enough to lure the
U.S. By no small measure, the U.S. is moving down this path because of
the sophistication that Colombia's government and its president have
shown in calming Washington's fears about another Latin American
entanglement.

Here in a remote jungle base, a new Colombian antinarcotics battalion
is poised to launch an assault on nearby coca fields and processing
labs and the guerrillas that protect them. The battalion has been
trained by U.S. Army Special Forces. It's nurtured by U.S.
intelligence-gathering. All that it's waiting for is a fleet of 60 or
so U.S. military transport helicopters -- essential for this dense
jungle terrain -- and the first of those should start arriving soon
with Congress poised to approve a new $1 billion-plus aid package for
Colombia.

Tantalizing Prospect

Half of the cocaine produced in the world is grown in southern
Colombia, in an area about the size of Maryland. Yet the tantalizing
prospect of trying to cut that off stands uneasily alongside
Washington's worries of stumbling into another El Salvador, with all
the political trauma, controversy and charges of U.S.-financed
human-rights abuses that dogged American involvement there.

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So Colombia has coaxed the U.S. into cooperation. Its military high
command has submitted the names of all 900 members of the new
battalion to be run through U.S. intelligence databases for reports of
human-rights violations or links to criminal activities. Bogota also
quietly agreed that American officials could review each helicopter
mission, before it flies, to ensure that U.S. equipment is being used
to fight the drug war and not Colombia's counter-insurgency war -- a
key demand of the U.S. Congress. At a nearby base, Colombian
polygraphers are questioning members of a second antinarcotics
battalion about possible past drug use and their "respect for civilian
populations."

"We want to calm the Americans. We don't want them to have any doubts
about the people we've selected," says Col. Mario Correa, chief of
personnel for the Colombian Army. Brig. Gen. Mario Montoya Uribe, who
heads all military operations in the south, is so attuned to U.S.
worries, that when asked the rules for using the new helicopters he
declares that only members of the U.S.-vetted battalions can fly in
U.S.-purchased equipment. An American military officer standing nearby
doesn't correct the general, but he later says that as far as
Washington is concerned, any of Gen. Montoya's 10,000 men can use the
transport, if they're on a clear drug mission.

Between President Andres Pastrana and members of his cabinet,
Colombian officials made 46 visits to Washington during the past two
years, while nearly 50 U.S. lawmakers traveled to Colombia. When
Delaware Democrat Sen. Joseph Biden, a self-described skeptic, made a
two-day trip here this spring, he spent almost every moment with Mr.
Pastrana, including a flight over the coca-growing regions in the
president's personal plane and dinner with the Pastrana family. He
came back a fierce believer. "I have never personally testified on the
floor that I have faith in an individual leader, but I have faith in
President Pastrana." Sen. Biden told the Senate this week.

Master of Charm

The extent of Colombia's overtures says a lot about its desperation --
but also plenty about Mr. Pastrana's understanding of the U.S. His
democratically elected government is fighting a multifront war against
drug traffickers, left-wing guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries,
all fueled by hundreds of millions of dollars of drug profits and
responsible for incredible brutalities. Colombia has the highest
kidnap rate in the world. The economy is struggling with its first
recession in 70 years, and the populace has all but run out of
patience with Mr. Pastrana's once hugely popular effort to negotiate
peace with his left-wing foes.

While his approval ratings have crashed at home, Mr. Pastrana has
shown himself to be a master of charm and public imagery in
Washington, winning over a wary president and Congress.

The Colombian adventure is still high-risk for the U.S. For all of
Bogota's pledges of a clean war, the Colombian military has a history
of incompetence and brutality, including strong links to the
paramilitaries, that has only partially improved in recent years. The
Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, with 15,000
fighters, has the run of nearly half the country and already has
threatened to target Americans if the helicopters arrive. The U.S.
demand that its aid be used solely for antidrug missions and not
counterinsurgency may actually lessen the chances for success. Until
Colombia takes back control of its territory, there's little hope of
ending drug production. And unless the guerrillas are cut off from the
drug bonanza, there's very little incentive for them to negotiate peace.

Without the drug money "it would be very hard for any of these
militaries to survive, whether it's the paramilitaries, the guerrillas
or common criminals," says Mr. Pastrana, who nevertheless insists that
the two missions will be kept as separate as possible.

On a recent morning, the view from a small plane delivering visitors
to Tres Equinas reveals the daunting terrain on which this war will be
fought and the number of targets involved. Amid vast stretches of
river and jungle are countless bright-green fields of coca hacked out
by hand. Colombia has long been the center of the cocaine processing
and smuggling business. It became a major coca grower only in the
mid-1990s, ironically after U.S.-backed interdiction and eradication
campaigns forced the growers out of Peru and Bolivia and into
Colombia's guerrilla-controlled south. In those years, U.S.-Colombian
cooperation was seriously hampered by frigid relations with
then-President Ernesto Samper, who was accused of taking $6 million in
campaign contributions from the drug cartels.

By the time of Mr. Pastrana's June 1998 election, both countries were
eager for reconciliation. A former television newsman and the son of a
former president, he clinched the vote with war-weary Colombians when,
just days before the election, Colombian newspapers carried a
front-page picture of his peace adviser meeting with the reclusive
head of the FARC, Manuel Marulanda. In the photograph, Mr. Marulanda
could be seen wearing a Pastrana-for-President watch on his wrist.

Two weeks after the election Mr. Pastrana ventured to guerrilla
territory, with almost no protection, to meet the FARC leadership,
promising to withdraw the Colombian army from five municipalities to
create a safe zone for peace talks. Soon after that he was in
Washington, where he regaled President Clinton with tales of his
guerrilla meeting and the bitter experience of being kidnapped by the
Medellin cartel while campaigning to become Bogota's mayor a decade
earlier.

The two countries didn't start talking about a stepped-up drug war
until last year. In Colombia, the peace talks were going nowhere while
the guerrillas were using the demilitarized zone -- roughly the size
of Switzerland -- to launch fierce attacks on the army and police. The
Central Intelligence Agency suddenly warned that it had underestimated
Colombia's cocaine production by 100% or more. When Defense Minister
Luis Fernando Ramirez came to Washington last summer to ask for $500
million in aid, he was surprised to find the U.S. talking about at
least twice that much.

Over the next few months, the Colombians, with heavy coaching from the
Americans, crafted "Plan Colombia," a $7.5 billion program of
political reform, crop substitution and counter-narcotics aid to be
financed jointly by Colombia, by drug-consuming countries in Europe
and the U.S., and by international lenders. The U.S. share would be
$1.6 billion, most of it military aid to improve Colombia's air and
river interdiction efforts and destroy industrial-size labs and coca
fields in guerrilla-held territory. While the Americans would provide
training and intelligence support, both Washington and Bogota pledged
that no U.S. troops would be involved in any of the missions.

President Clinton embraced the program, but for the rest of 1999 he
left it mainly to the Colombians to sell on Capitol Hill. The pitch
wasn't easy. The Republicans, and particularly House Speaker Dennis
Hastert, had long championed the antinarcotics cause and particularly
that of the Colombian antinarcotics police. But other members of his
caucus were skeptical of both the price tag and Mr. Pastrana's peace
efforts with the FARC. Many Democrats were opposed to anything that
smacked of another Central America.

"This is only the first billion-dollar installment of a multiyear
open-ended commitment," Vermont Democrat Sen. Patrick Leahy warned,
expressing particular concern about the Colombian military's poor
human-rights record.

Wooing All Sides

Mr. Pastrana and Luis Alberto Moreno, his Washington ambassador and
one of his closest friends, worked hard to woo all sides. Even as
conservatives were complaining that Bogota was selling out to the
Marxists, New York Stock Exchange Chairman Richard Grasso accepted an
invitation to fly to the demilitarized zone to tutor the FARC on the
joys of capitalism.

Of all Colombia's wooing efforts, however, the most surprising is
opening its security forces to U.S. scrutiny. U.S. law bans the
government from providing support to any foreign security-force unit
that has been implicated in gross human-rights abuses. But the
name-by-name vetting to which Colombia agreed goes far beyond that.

The U.S. scrutiny began with the American Embassy in Bogota and
continued in Washington. U.S. officials ran the names of all the
officers and noncommissioned officers through its computers, and
didn't object to anyone on the first list. On the second, however, the
State Department raised questions about six proposed members, all
accused of some crime but cleared, according to the Colombians, by
their judicial system. The department eventually approved four, and
the Colombians agreed to transfer a fifth when it was discovered that
his case was still open. The two sides are still wrangling over the
captain of a unit in which some members were accused of killing a boy.
The captain was cleared, but the Americans worry that he may have
participated in some coverup.

The biggest missing piece of the puzzle now is how the guerrillas will
respond to a stepped-up drug war. If the U.S. helicopters come, will
they increase their attacks or start negotiating peace in earnest?
Under pressure, will they stop protecting and taxing the drug trade or
is the money too enticing to abandon?

In Colombia's bizarre world of three-quarters war and one-quarter
peace, the guerrillas themselves can be asked those questions. Three
times a week, a commercial flight travels from Bogota to San Vicente
del Caguan, the provincial town that is the unwilling capital of the
despeje, or demilitarized zone.

Complaints and Claims

A sign at the San Vicente airport welcomes visitors to the site of
government-FARC peace talks. There's no question, however, which side
is in charge. Young men and a surprising number of young women stride
around in the FARC's crisp camouflage uniforms, with automatic weapons
slung over their backs. In the central square, the FARC has set up a
public information office to receive visitors. A 15-minute drive
outside town, it has its own "office of complaints and claims" to
settle local conflicts. While San Vicente's mayor has remained, nearly
every other representative of official power has long gone, including
two judges and the prosecutor.

"The whole town has been kidnapped," charges Mayor Omar Garcia
Castillo, who blames Mr. Pastrana for ceding San Vicente to the FARC
without consulting anyone here. The State Department's annual
human-rights report charges the FARC with widespread abuses within the
despeje.

The FARC's reaction to Plan Colombia is predictably strident. Ivan
Rios, who heads the FARC's issues committee for the peace talks,
claims that the plan is actually a cover for a larger American plot to
wipe out the guerrillas and gain "access to the Amazon region's
strategic resources of water, oxygen, and biodiversity." Sitting in
the FARC's San Vicente office, he tells a reporter that if the
helicopters start attacking FARC-protected drug areas, "there will be
a fierce reaction against American representatives and diplomats and
all those who come to attack them."

Carlos Antonio Lozada, one of the FARC's negotiators, is more
temperate. He leaves open whether the guerrillas will pull out of the
talks if military operations begin in the south. He also says that Mr.
Rios's threats are "misunderstood. Our problem is with the American
government, not its people." Mr. Lozada's words are more chilling,
however, when he explains that instead of indiscriminate kidnapping,
the FARC's new Law 002 will levy a tax on anyone with more than $1
million in assets. As for those who refuse? "We'll make one or two
calls to discuss it with them and then we'll take them until they're
ready to pay," he says.

What's equally striking is how much the mechanics of negotiating a
peace appear to have captured the FARC's imagination.

'Villa Nueva Colombia'

During the past few months, Mr. Rios has helped organize meetings with
more than 500 Colombian union members, women, blacks and peasants who
have traveled to San Vicente to discuss the subject of "how to
generate employment," one of the 12 topics being negotiated. The peace
talks and the audiences are held in "Villa Nueva Colombia" a prefab
complex the government has built about an hour's drive outside town,
with computers and fax machines to receive citizen input
electronically, including on the Internet.

It's too soon to tell whether so much comfort and contact with the
outside world is actually changing the FARC. The government and
guerrilla negotiators are supposed to meet early next month to discuss
a possible cease-fire. Mr. Lozada says he doesn't know if a deal can
be worked out, but he also insists that "the FARC is not at the table
to demilitarize."

Perhaps the biggest question of all is whether the FARC is willing to
give up the drug business. FARC leaders insist that they're
involvement is peripheral. "We have to raise funds, so we tax whatever
business there is in the regions we control," explains Mr. Rios. Some
Colombian and U.S. officials tell a very different story of FARC
fronts ordering peasants by gunpoint to plant coca and then taxing
every step of the process, from harvest to lab to transport. Without
the drug money the FARC "would disappear," charges Gen. Fernando
Tapias, chief of the Colombian armed forces.

Mr. Lozada says that the FARC is eager to do away with the drug trade.
The FARC has proposed that a number of European and other governments
finance a major FARC-controlled pilot project, providing funds for
substitute crops, health, education and transport to markets. The
guerrillas, he says, will guarantee the eradication of all the coca
fields -- but only if the FARC is in charge.

Jaime Ruiz, coordinator for Plan Colombia, also agrees that economic
development is the key to whether his country can be permanently
weaned from the drug trade. "This won't work if it's just a military
strategy," he says. "We have to give these people another way to live."