U.S., COLOMBIA GET SET FOR WAR ON DRUGS

American Plan Mostly Would Aid The Military

BOGOTA, Colombia -(AP)- As new figures showed a 20 percent rise in Colombian
cocaine production, a high-level U.S. delegation met yesterday with leaders
of this turbulent nation to discuss a drug-fighting aid package.

The visit was led by Thomas Pickering, the State Department's third-ranking
official. It came as the U.S. Congress was opening debate on the proposed
two-year, $1.6 billion aid package that would dramatically escalate the war
on drugs in Colombia.

Primarily a military aid plan, the package includes 63 helicopters and the
training and equipping of two new army counter-drug battalions.

It aims to give Colombia the firepower, mobility and intelligence to defeat
leftist rebels who protect drug crops.

The Andean country solidified its place last year as the world's principal
source of cocaine, according to new figures compiled by the CIA.

Cultivation of coca, the drug's raw material, increased 20 percent in
Colombia last year, the figures said.

Coca cultivation has long been widespread in neighboring South American
countries too. But due largely to Colombia's instability -- nearly half the
country is controlled by leftist rebels and their paramilitary foes, both
largely financed by the drug trade -- traffickers have moved the bulk of
coca cultivation here since the mid-1990s.

The Clinton administration's aid package would permit an army push this year
into guerrilla-dominated southern jungles, where Colombian officials say the
coca crop has tripled in the past two years. U.S.-trained troops would
provide ground and air protection while planes spray herbicides on the
crops.

In a related development yesterday, Colombian rebels and government
officials visited the Vatican to seek the Roman Catholic Church's help in
ending their country's 36-year conflict.

Pope John Paul II did not attend the meeting with guerrillas of the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, and the Colombian
government's peace commissioner.

In his place, the pope sent a Vatican official, reported in Colombia to be
Italian priest Giorgio Lingua.

The meeting was part of a European tour aimed partly at gaining support for
the peace process. But government delegates say they are also trying to
expose the insular FARC to the modern world.