CLINTON TO OFFER AID IN COLOMBIA DRUG WAR

(WASHINGTON, Jan. 10) -- President Clinton plans to announce on Tuesday
a $1.28 billion emergency aid program for Colombia to help that
country fight the growing narcotics trade and to prop up its democracy
over the next two years, a senior administration official said today.

"The president believes there is a strong national interest in helping
Colombia deal with the narcotics threat," the official said. "It is
clearly a situation where emergency money is warranted, given the
determination of the drug traffickers to undermine the government in
Bogota."

Although the money would be aimed at fighting drugs, it would also
help a government that is battling one of the longest guerrilla wars
in Latin America, one that has become intertwined with the narcotics
trade and has left tens of thousands dead over 40 years.

The proposal is an accelerated version of legislation that
Congressional Republicans introduced in the fall to provide more than
$1.2 billion to Colombia over three years to stem what they described
as a "crisis situation."

The largest part of the administration package would be spent on
military hardware to upgrade Colombian forces in their fight against
narcotics traders, many of whom are aligned with antigovernment rebels.

The administration proposal would also finance strengthening the
justice system and give money to people displaced by the civil war at
a time when Colombia is buckling under its worst economy in decades.

The biggest single item is $400 million to buy 30 Blackhawk
helicopters, which are equipped with weapons but are mostly used for
ferrying troops and equipment, said a Pentagon official. Most of the
money, including funds to buy military equipment, would be under the
direction of the State Department, not the Pentagon.

Even though 10 percent of the money would go to the Pentagon, there
was concern that a program of such size could inexorably lead to a
broader American military commitment to the war and the potential for
American soldiers to be drawn into combat against the insurgency.

"We must question whether or not this aid package is another thinly
veiled counterinsurgency program, one that will deepen the U.S.
involvement in this dirty war," said Carlos Salinas of Amnesty
International.

Although officials at the Office of Management and Budget refined the
proposal late into the evening, the new financing would pay for three
general programs.

The Pentagon would receive $144 million to help train two additional
antinarcotics battalions. They would begin operations in southern
Colombia and improve the tracking of narcotics dealers with new radios
and other equipment, as well as improving ground-based radar, an
administration official said. The larger amount would buy helicopters
to help stop the narcotics trade.

The administration has been grappling with Colombian policy since last
year, when Congressional Republicans made their proposal and President
Andres Pastrana outlined a $7.5 billion strategy to solve his nation's
crisis in an address to the United Nations General Assembly.

Mr. Clinton's plan answers many of the requests in Mr. Pastrana's
"Plan Colombia" and is meant to illustrate that Mr. Clinton has made
Colombia a foreign policy priority in his last year in office. In this
year's budget, Colombia receives $300 million, making it the third
largest recipient of aid, behind Israel and Egypt. With the money
already allotted to Colombia, the entire two-year package would total
$1.6 billion.

One big proponent of the additional aid is Gen. Barry McCaffrey,
director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. In a visit to
Colombia last summer, he said that Colombia was in "an emergency
situation." General McCaffrey argued that the distinction between
rebels and drug traffickers had grown irrelevant and that the poorly
equipped and inadequately trained armed forces needed immediate help.

But Congress cut off military assistance to much of the Colombian army
two years ago to protest its record of human rights abuses. Under a
law sponsored by Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, the
American Embassy in Bogota now reviews all members of the antidrug
battalion who are being trained by American Special Forces units, to
ensure that the Colombians are not human rights abusers.

That instruction includes intelligence, communications, reconnaisance,
river operations and mortars, American officials said.

Bogota is very pleased with the proposal, said a senior Colombian
official, who added that his government had been working with Congress
and the White House to draw up a package that Republicans and
Democrats would approve.

"Drug production," the official said, "feeds all the violence in
Colombia, creates the economic problems, hurts the people and creates
problems of human rights."

Mr. Pastrana has failed in his attempts to negotiate a cease-fire with
the rebels or to reduce cocaine production, which thrives despite a
nearly 50 percent increase in American drug-eradication efforts in
1998.