U.S. OFFICIAL DEFENDS ANTI-NARCOTIC TROOPS

TRES ESQUINAS, Colombia - Rockets, mortars and machine-gun fire lit up
a patch of Colombia's southern jungles Thursday as White House drug
czar Barry McCaffrey witnessed the opening of a new chapter in the war
on drugs.

McCaffrey, in Colombia to promote a controversial $1.6 billion
anti-narcotics aid package for the Andes, squinted into a green
expanse where troops from a new U.S.-trained anti-drug battalion
conducted a live-fire exercise.

As soldiers in foxholes lobbed shells into the trees, a U.S.-donated
helicopter slammed a rocket at imaginary guerrilla columns advancing
on the remote Amazon outpost.

Following the exercise, McCaffrey, a retired general and Vietnam War
hero, gave a stirring send-off to some of the soldiers who will soon
be at the front lines in the battle to eradicate drugs at their source.

``You are the ones Colombia has asked to step forward. Good luck,
troops,'' he said to their enthusiastic applause.

Training and equipping new Colombian battalions such as the 950-man
unit based at Tres Esquinas, 250 miles south of Bogota, is the
centerpiece of Washington's strategy for stemming an explosion of
cocaine and heroin production in this Andean nation. More than half of
the aid package now before the U.S. Congress would go toward creating
two new battalions like the one already up and running, and providing
the army and air force with 63 helicopters.

Critics say the plan could embroil the United States in a brutal,
decades-old civil conflict reminiscent of those fought in Central
America during the 1980s. Leftist rebels control vast tracts of
southern jungle, financing their insurgency by taxing peasants who
grow drug crops and protecting drug traffickers.

Human rights groups, meanwhile, charge that Washington is allying
itself with a military of dubious credentials. They say the Colombian
armed forces work in concert with right-wing paramilitary militias who
massacre alleged guerrilla sympathizers and also are deeply involved
in the drug trade.

``Outside of Washington, I can't find anyone that believes the drug
war makes any sense. People just laugh at it,'' said Robert White, a
former U.S. ambassador to El Salvador who believes that the aid
package is a thin pretext for fighting the guerrillas and will only
inflame Colombia's conflict.

The base at Tres Esquinas will be the command post for a major push by
the new army battalions into the surrounding jungles where, as one
Colombian officer put it, coca ``grows like weeds.'' The military's
role will be to secure areas so U.S.-provided crop-dusterscan spray
the drug crops.

The outpost is strategically located on the border of Putumayo and
Caqueta, the two Colombian states where roughly 70 percent of the
country's coca, the raw material for cocaine, is grown.

Out in the surrounding wilderness are an estimated 7,000 members of
Colombia's largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia, or FARC, and as many as 3,000 paramilitary fighters,
officials said.

Though the two are supposedly divided by ideology, the base's
second-in-command, Col. Luis Ricardo, said their grudge in this region
is primarily over control of the bustling drug trade.

Once operations begin in full, Ricardo said, the battalion expects
heavy resistance not just from the armed groups but from an estimated
17,000 peasant families who could mount demonstrations to defend their
livelihood.

U.S. and Colombian officials are discussing plans for aiding and
resettling as many as 10,000 residents who would be uprooted by the
eradication operations.

McCaffrey brushed off questions about whether the stepped-up U.S.
training role eventually could lead to a large involvement of American
troops in Colombia.

The U.S. military presence in Colombia fluctuates between 150 and 200
uniformed personnel on any given day, the U.S. Embassy says, and none
are allowed to accompany Colombian soldiers into combat.

Despite eradication efforts, cocaine production in Colombia has more
than doubled since 1995.