WITH ROSES, AN AMBASSADOR POLISHES COLOMBIA'S IMAGE

WASHINGTON - LIKE most Colombians, Ambassador Luis Alberto Moreno-Mejia
hates his country's reputation among Americans. "I'm sure that if you did a
poll, the first thing that would come to mind is the association with
cocaine," he said. "It's bad for me, and it's bad for Colombia.

I think the self-esteem of Colombians is very much hurt when we are
perceived this way."

So last month, the 46-year-old diplomat saw an opportunity to change some
minds. His ammunition: 20,000 Colombian roses, in shades of red, cream,
coral, yellow and blush, and the Colombian actor who plays Juan Valdez, the
fictional coffee grower in the television commercials.

The roses were sent by air freight to Washington in time for the National
Symphony Orchestra ball, one of the social events of the season. The actor
was dressed in a poncho and placed at the entryway to the ballroom, handing
out vacuum-packed samples of Colombian coffee to guests including Associate
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and Louis J. Freeh, the F.B.I. director.

The idea was to remind Washington's decisionmakers that Colombia's major
export to the United States is not cocaine. It is petroleum, followed by
coffee, followed by cut flowers. "We wanted to show people in Washington
that Colombia is more than just what you read in the headlines," the
ambassador said. And he thinks it worked. "I sure hope so," he said.

A more important victory for Ambassador Moreno-Mejia came last week, when
President Clinton announced a $1.3 billion emergency aid package to
Colombia to help the government of President Andres Pastrana in its war
against narcotics traffickers and the leftist guerrillas who control much
of the cocaine trade.

"President Pastrana's inauguration in August 1998 brought to Colombia a new
spirit of hope," Mr. Clinton said. "But increased drug production and
trafficking, coupled with a serious economic recession and sustained
violence, have put that progress in peril."

Ambassador Moreno-Mejia said the aid package, which still must be approved
by Congress, was a landmark in relations between Colombia and the United
States, the largest market for Colombian cocaine.

"I consider it a turning point because there is a recognition that there
needs to be burden-sharing in this fight," he told a visitor to his office
in the Colombia Embassy, one wall dominated by a large portrait of SimF3n
Bolivar, the great independence hero of Latin America. "Colombia has
suffered tremendously for many, many years, and it has been in this fight
very much alone."

Mr. Moreno-Mejia is widely praised in the administration and in Congress
for his tireless lobbying on behalf of Colombia, which is now the third
largest recipient of American aid, after Israel and Egypt.

A former business executive and television journalist whose taste in
clothing runs to Armani and Hermes, he is the picture of a modern diplomat.
He is equally comfortable conversing in English as in Spanish, just as he
seems equally at home in Washington as in Colombia, not surprising since he
was a citizen of both countries until recently.

The ambassador, the oldest of seven children, was born in Philadelphia,
where his father was in medical school at the University of Pennsylvania.
He held both an American and Colombian passport until fall 1998, when he
was named ambassador by Mr. Pastrana, a friend since they attended the same
high school in Colombia. The ambassador attended college and business
school in the United States.

He was forced to give up his American citizenship shortly after his
diplomatic appointment was announced; American citizens cannot hold
diplomatic immunity in their own country.

He recalled the process: "You go to the U.S. Embassy and you say, I want to
renounce my citizenship, and they put papers in front of you, and you sign
all these papers, and they say, why are you doing this? And I said, well,
it's because I want to represent Colombia in the United States." He says he
renounced his American citizenship reluctantly, and sadly.

The administration's new aid package to Colombia appears to enjoy
bipartisan support on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers from both parties agree
it is needed to save that nation of 38 million people from economic and
political collapse.

The drug cartels that dominated the Colombia cocaine industry in the 1980's
have largely disappeared. But they have been replaced by guerrillas who use
the multibillion-dollar cocaine trade to underwrite their insurgency, which
advanced last summer to within 30 miles of the nation's capital.

AMBASSADOR Moreno-Mejia warns that without the aid package, which includes
money to pay for more than 60 military helicopters for the Colombian army
and police, there will be "progressive deterioration."

The American military commitment has alarmed human rights groups and
historians who see comparisons between the involvement in Colombia and what
happened in Vietnam a generation ago. But the ambassador rejects the
comparison. "It's not a military engagement," he said. "This is a situation
in which you're helping Colombia with the tools so that Colombians can
solve their own problems."

He figures he will need to serve at least another year in Washington to see
the aid package approved and put into effect. After that, he and his wife,
a Venezuelan economist who was her country's trade minister, plan to return
to Colombia. His two children from a previous marriage - a 15-year-old son
and a 12-year-old daughter - are in school in Colombia.

A return home would be a novelty in his large family. Mr. Morena-Mejia's
parents have become American citizens and settled in Florida, and five of
his six siblings also now call the United States their home. But unlike the
rest of his family, "I always wanted to be back in Colombia," he said. "The
best legacy you can leave to your children is a sense of country - and of
helping to do something to improve it."