HOUSE PANEL APPROVES AID TO BOLSTER A FALTERING COLOMBIA

WASHINGTON, March 9 - The House appropriations committee easily approved an
emergency aid package tonight of $1.7 billion to shore up Colombia's
tottering democracy and enable its military to step up its war against
narcotics traffickers. The vote was 33 to 13, with opponents noting the
abysmal human rights record of the Colombian Army, which will receive much
of the money and equipment.

The House package, which was crafted by the Republican leadership and was
an increase over the original request from President Clinton, included more
money to help with human rights and judicial reform in Colombia and to help
neighboring countries fight the narcotics trade.

"If we move the druggies out of Colombia we don't want them to land in
another country in the region," said Representative C. W. Bill Young,
Republican of Florida, chairman of the committee.

The president had asked for $1.2 billion for his two-year plan to support
Colombia's tottering democracy and bolster its military efforts to fight
the drug trade by reducing the booming production of cocaine and heroin in
Colombia. The House panel today added $500 million to the program's budget.

Colombia is the source of 90 percent of the cocaine consumed in the United
States.

But the country is embroiled in a three-sided civil war including rebels
and paramilitary groups that are lavishly supported by the drug trade.

Democrats objected to what they said was the hastiness of today's action,
arguing that the administration may believe it is only fighting a war
against drugs in Colombia but could find itself unwittingly pulled into the
civil war.

Calling on lessons learned from Vietnam, Representative David R. Obey,
Democrat of Wisconsin, said that while he didn't think the administration
had any plans to send American troops to fight in Colombia, he worried that
there "could be a confluence of events that could lead to that."

Mr. Obey failed to persuade the committee to withhold temporarily the $500
million of military aid earmarked for training and equipping two army
counternarcotics battalions. He said Congress needed to know more about
their mission to gain control over two cocaine-producing provinces in
southern Colombia before approving the money.

The House package also includes money for 30 Blackhawk and 30 Huey
helicopters for the Colombian Army and police forces and $115.5 million for
the national police.

The entire $9 billion emergency spending bill - which also includes aid for
the Kosovo and East Timor peacekeeping missions, natural disaster
assistance, and money to pay the Pentagon's rising fuel bill - will go to
the floor of the House within two weeks, according to committee aides.

Central to today's debate was the sense that Colombia's president, Andres
Pastrana, may be running out of time to implement his "Plan Colombia" to
strengthen democracy, a program that is also seeking money from Europe and
international financial institutions.

Both Republicans and Democrats praised Mr. Pastrana today for placing human
rights as a priority and for trying to negotiate peace with the guerrillas,
even though he has failed to reach a cease-fire.

"He is in the middle, he is trying to lead Colombia into the modern world,"
said Representative James P. Moran, Republican of Virginia. "If we don't
help him now it may be too late later."

But several Democratic opponents of the bills argued that it would be
better to provide economic and humanitarian aid, and the Senate is likely
to raise even greater concerns about human rights in Colombia when it
considers the bill.