CLINTON WILL OFFER COLOMBIA $1 BILLION TO FUND DRUG WAR

Skyrocketing production and exports, guerrilla opposition prompted move

President Clinton plans to announce a massive new aid program for Colombia
next week totaling more than $1 billion in military and development
assistance over the next two years. It will be used to combat narcotics
cultivation and trafficking and bolster that country's beleaguered
democracy.

More than half the money will be in a White House request for a supplemental
appropriation for this fiscal year, with the remainder to be part of the
fiscal 2001 budget that the administration is due to send to Congress on
February 7, administration officials said.

Colombia is the third-largest recipient of U.S. military aid, after Egypt
and Israel. It received nearly $300 million last year and is already in line
for more than $200 million in the current budget. But skyrocketing Colombian
cocaine and heroin production and exports to the United States -- and the
Bogota government's losing battle against Marxist guerrillas involved in
drug trafficking -- led to bipartisan consensus last year that the U.S.
effort should be sharply increased.

DEBATE OVER FUNDS

The basic framework of the administration's proposal has been determined,
but sources who declined to be identified cautioned that discussions are
still under way among the Office of Management and Budget and the State
Department, the Pentagon and the Office of National Drug Control Policy on
how the money will be distributed. The White House plans to brief
congressional leaders on the proposal before it is announced.

Congressional Republicans calling for stepped-up anti-drug action criticized
the administration last fall for promising, and then failing to produce, a
significant new aid plan for Colombia before the current budget was adopted.
In response, Clinton pledged in December a package for early this year
``that will be substantial, effective and have broad bipartisan support.''
An interagency task force has spent months developing the plan.

Republicans introduced their own $1.6 billion, three-year aid proposal in
November, saying the Colombian situation has reached ``crisis proportions.''
Differences in the two plans are expected to reflect competing views on
whether the bulk of the money should go directly into police and military
counter-drug efforts, as the GOP would like, or be divided more evenly
between those efforts and government infrastructure and economic assistance,
as Colombian President Andres Pastrana has requested.

Debate over the proposals is likely to begin as early as the first week in
February, when a round of hearings on Colombia is planned.

COLOMBIA'S DRUG PROPOSAL

Acting at the administration's behest and with its help, Pastrana's
government put together a comprehensive plan last summer to train and supply
new equipment to Colombia's armed forces and anti-drug police, provide
education and develop alternative crops for Colombian peasants who grow most
of the drug-producing coca and poppies, reform the judiciary and help
bolster the economy -- now in its deepest recession in history.

Pastrana asked the United States to help finance up to $3.5 billion of the
plan's three-year, $7.5 billion price tag. The administration's failure to
respond quickly helped send Pastrana's popularity plummeting.

At the same time, his government has confronted a deteriorating military
situation: a failing economy and lack of results in negotiations with the
largest of several armed rebel groups, the 20,000-strong Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia.

Military aid to Colombia is complicated by the fact that rebel forces
simultaneously occupy most of the country's drug-producing areas -- where
they control the peasants who grow the drug crops, facilitate exports and
tax traffickers -- as they continue their fight to overthrow the government.
Although the Colombian military is charged with fighting the rebels, the
national police have primary anti-narcotics responsibility, and the tasks
frequently overlap.