COLOMBIA OPENS NEW PHASE OF $1.6B DRUG WAR FUNDED BY U.S.

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 are also 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 the aid package is a thin pretext for
fighting the guerrillas and will only inflame Colombia's conflict.

In Washington on Thursday, the Clinton administration's aid plan drew a
mixed reaction at a Senate hearing, with lawmakers questioning whether the
money would have its intended effect.

"The more the administration spends in Colombia, the more coca is grown,"
said Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., chairman of the foreign operations
subcommittee that held the hearing.

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-dusters can 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 already 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 could lead eventually to a large involvement of American troops in
Colombia.

"There are three Americans here. They are experts in intelligence," he said.
"There are probably more U.S. reporters."

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. The country produces 90 percent of the world's supply
and is a growing source of heroin.