U.S. ANTI-DRUG EFFORT IN COLOMBIA HURT BY LACK OF FUNDS

WASHINGTON -- U.S.-backed anti-drug programs in Colombia are running
out of money and have effectively ground to a halt as Congress delays
emergency funding for military training and other activities, senior
Clinton administration officials say.

Anticipating that Congress would quickly pass a $1.3 billion
supplemental appropriation requested on an emergency basis in January,
the administration began expanding the anti-drug effort early this
year and stepped up spending. But the funding package has been held up
in the Senate for months and now appears unlikely to move forward
until at least midsummer.

In the meantime, according to officials seeking to emphasize the
urgency of the problem, leftist guerrillas and right-wing paramilitary
forces involved in the drug trade have stepped up deployment and
strengthened their defenses in the main regions where coca, the basic
ingredient of cocaine, is grown. Instead of leveling off, as the
administration had hoped, production of cocaine is likely to increase
this year.

Among the results of the funding shortfall cited by
officials:

. Fumigation flights against coca, a centerpiece of the anti-drug
effort have been scaled back or stopped in many key areas. Officials
estimate that Colombian cocaine supplies more than 80 percent of the
U.S. market. Aerial fumigation of opium poppies, the raw material of
heroin, has been stopped.

. A special Colombian army anti-drug battalion, trained at U.S.
expense last year, has yet to undertake its first mission, because the
helicopters it is supposed to use are not available.

. A second 1,000-man battalion -- recruited, vetted for human rights
violations and moved two months ago to a training base in southern
Colombia -- is "doing jumping jacks" while waiting for U.S. Army
Special Forces trainers for whom no funding has been approved, said
one official.

Administration officials previously had reassured Congress that the
proposed remedy would begin to turn the tide in Colombia and, some
years from now, stem the flood of drugs into the United States. That
was enough to sail the emergency $1.3 billion supplemental
appropriation through the House in March and send it to the Senate.

But some senators remain opposed to the package, holding that the
Colombian military should be ineligible for aid because of human
rights abuses, that the plan itself is poorly conceived and risks U.S.
involvement in a guerrilla war, or that anti-drug money is better
spent on prevention efforts at home.

"The administration has yet to say what they expect to achieve, in
what period of time, at what cost, and at what risk to hundreds of
American advisers there," said Tim Rieser, an aide to Sen. Patrick J.
Leahy, D-Vt., one of the leading opponents of the measure.

But "if the Republican leadership wanted to get the aid passed,"
Rieser said, "they could do it." Aid opponents agree that the votes
are there to pass it.

All sides blame the delay on Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott,
R-Miss., who took the lead last year in urging the administration to
deal expeditiously with Colombia and who repeated last week, "I'm for
the president's proposal with regard to the Colombian drug war." But
Lott's refusal to consider the aid an emergency measure and his
insistence on attaching it to the regular foreign operations bill --
which has become bogged down in an unrelated Senate fight -- doomed
it. Even if the bill passes this summer, Colombia might not see a dime
before the end of the year.