U.S. PLANS BIG BOOST IN AID TO COLOMBIA

Over $1 Billion Pledged To Assist Drug War, Economy

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 year 2001 budget that the administration is due to send
to Congress on Feb. 7, administration officials said.

Colombia already receives the third-largest amount of U.S. military aid,
after Egypt and Israel. The United States gave nearly $300 million last
year and Colombia is 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.

The basic framework of the administration's proposal has been determined,
although sources who declined to be identified cautioned that the Office of
Management and Budget's discussions with the State Department, the Pentagon
and the Office of National Drug Control Policy are still underway 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 in December pledged 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
administration's 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 more evenly divided
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.

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
three-year plan's $7.5 billion price tag. The administration's failure to
respond quickly helped send Pastrana's popularity plummeting. At the same
time, the government has confronted a deteriorating military situation;
lack of results in negotiations with the largest of several armed rebel
groups, the 20,000-strong Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia; and a
failing economy.

Although Pastrana won the presidency 18 months ago with a large majority on
a promise to negotiate peace, a new poll shows that 68 percent of
Colombians surveyed view him unfavorably. The nationwide poll was published
yesterday in Bogota's El Espectador newspaper.

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--and are fighting 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.

Republicans have argued that a major portion of U.S. aid should go to the
police as part of a stiffened anti-drug program, while the
administration--with strong Pentagon input--has said that only the
Colombian military can roust the insurgents permanently from drug-producing
areas, primarily in the southern part of the country.

The administration proposal includes some additional aircraft, weapons and
communications equipment for the police. But it provides major improvements
in training, logistical and intelligence support for the Colombian
military, as well as upgraded equipment. The U.S. military has already
trained a 950-soldier quick-reaction counter-narcotics battalion in the
Colombian army and plans to produce at least two more. The government plan
and the GOP proposal also call for improvement in regional drug
interdiction efforts affecting Peru, Bolivia and Venezuela.

As it develops a strategy to promote its plan, the administration also must
contend with potential criticism from congressional Democrats, who want to
limit aid to the Colombian military because of its unsavory human rights
record while avoiding U.S. involvement in counterinsurgency efforts.

Administration sources, who said the aid proposal includes programs to
improve human rights performance, maintain that the Colombian military has
already made major strides in stopping abuses. The Pentagon has said it can
ensure that U.S. assistance is used only in those areas of the country
where the anti-drug war is being fought.