COLOMBIA: FOOLISH AID

A proposed new aid package to Colombia is further evidence of confusion and
disarray in U.S. foreign policy.

Colombia would get $1.6 billion over two years, five times its current
funding level of $300 million.

Eighty percent of the money would be spent on the military and police, to be
used for operations aimed at stopping the production and smuggling of drugs.

That would hurt the leftist rebels who finance their civil war by
''running'' drugs and taxing other smugglers in the areas that they control.

With rebels threatening retaliation, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright
insisted they weren't being targeted.

''This is not a counter-insurgency program,'' she emphasized; ''it is a
counter-narcotics program.''

The president, meanwhile, was insisting it indeed was a counterinsurgency
program. The money, he said, would ''dramatically strengthen and solidify
thgled in a sovereign nation's civil war,
although it has fallen into that habit during the Clinton presidency.

Albright's explanation is a closer call.

Colombia supplies four-fifths of the cocaine consumed in the United States,
as well as a growing amount of the heroin sold around the world. The U.S.
government has a valid interest in slowing the flow of those drugs.

Also, Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., after a recent trip to Colombia, said drug
production has tripled and the economy is down - not a good scenario for one
of America's largest trading partners.

But $1.6 billion is a lot of money, and there is no guarantee that it would
accomplish anything. Drug Strategies, a private group, says $26 billion
already has been spent over the past 20 years on interdiction and
international supply control programs - and narcotics still flow freely into
this country.

The money might be better spent on drug treatment programs. Or it could be
used for projects that unquestionably would achieve a purpose - widening
roads in crowded cities, for example.

If the administration decides it is fighting drugs, rather than rebels, it
may have a chance in Congress. But even then, it could face an uphill
battle.