COLOMBIA REBEL CALLS CLINTON'S ANTI-DRUG AID PLAN 'DANGEROUS'

SAN VICENTE DEL CAGUAN, Colombia (AP) - President Clinton's proposed $1.3
billion anti-narcotics aid package for Colombia will only lead to more
bloodshed, a leftist rebel spokesman warned Wednesday.

Interviewed in the rebel-held southern ranching town of San Vicente del
Caguan, Commander Ivan Rios called the massive aid infusion announced
Tuesday a "dangerous" step that will escalate fighting without reducing the
flow of drugs to the United States.

"This is not the solution, but rather the worsening of the problem," said
Rios, a midlevel commander of the country's largest guerrilla band, the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

In announcing the plan Tuesday to up U.S. aid to Colombia from $300 million
last year, Clinton said it will "help Colombia promote peace and prosperity
and deepen its democracy."

The money will go toward helping stem the production and export of illegal
narcotics while supporting economic development and improving human rights,
Clinton said.

The bulk of the aid will go toward special counternarcotics battalions in
the Colombian military, whose principal activity is battling the rebels.
The battalions will receive dozens of American-made helicopters for
transporting troops and drug surveillance.

The ranking Democrat on the U.S. Senate appropriations subcommittee that
oversees foreign spending said Wednesday that he wants the Clinton
administration to better explain what it hopes to achieve with the plan and
at what risk.

"We at least need to see a concerted effort by the Colombian Army to thwart
the paramilitary groups, who are responsible for most of the atrocities
against civilians, and a willingness by the Colombian Armed Forces to turn
over to the civilian courts their own members who violate human rights,"
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said in a statement.

Trying to compel the Colombian rebels to negotiate by increasing
counterinsurgency efforts is "a costly and dangerous policy," Leahy said.

While insisting that Washington is not getting involved in another
counterinsurgency war in Latin America, U.S. officials concede that their
anti-narcotics strategy now requires confronting the rebels.

Funds are also being provided to wean poor peasants away from planting coca
and poppy, the illegal crops used to make cocaine and heroin. The rebels,
who earn huge revenues by taxing the peasant growers, have pledged in peace
talks to participate in crop-substitution programs.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is scheduled to visit Colombia this
weekend to explain the aid package, which will be part of Clinton's fiscal
2001 budget.

Colombia's drug production has skyrocketed in the past few years despite
increased law enforcement efforts here - primarily a U.S-backed program to
help police raid jungle drug laboratories and to fumigate illegal crops
from the air.

Those efforts are destined to fail, U.S. officials contend, as long as the
15,000-member FARC retains its grip on the southern regions where drug
crops are growing the fastest. Police are outgunned by the rebels, who
often fire on fumigation planes.