BATTALION DOES DRY-RUN OF DRUG WAR

TRES ESQUINAS, Colombia -- Rockets, mortars and machine-gun fire lit
up a patch of Colombia's southern jungles yesterday 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 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 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 deeply involved in the
drug trade.

In Washington yesterday, 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. and chairman of the foreign
operations subcommittee.

The base at Tres Esquinas will be the command post for a major push by
the 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
area.

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.

Once operations begin in full, 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.