COLOMBIA DESPERATELY NEEDS PROMISED AID

ON Dec. 20, as a holiday "truce" in Colombia's bloody civil war was
proclaimed, leftist guerrillas ambushed an army patrol in northern
Cesar province and killed nine soldiers. Just to confirm that this was
no mistake, army units near the town of Fundacion were attacked on
Christmas Day by the Marxist FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia).

"This truce exists only on paper," said an unsurprised Gen. Fernando
Tapias, chief of the Colombian armed forces. The phony cease-fire goes
down as another illusion by well-meaning, peace-seeking President
Andres Pastrana. His concessions have been met by escalated guerrilla
attacks over the past year.

But Pastrana's biggest illusion may be his expectation of substantial
U.S. military aid to counter the estimated $100 million a month
received by FARC from big time drug traffickers who are protected by
the guerrillas.

The scope and success of the year-end FARC offensive raises
these serious questions about the U.S. commitment to Colombia:

Will President Clinton break his silence on the danger of Colombia
becoming a narco-leftist state? Will he use his State of the Union
address Jan. 27 to call for the $1 billion to $1.5 billion promised to
the Colombian government more than three months ago? Will he actually
include those funds in the federal budget to be presented Feb. 7?

The likely answer to all these questions is no. Colombia's struggle
for survival is the world's forgotten war. So vocal about outrages far
away in the Balkans, Clinton volunteers nothing in the ordeal of his
hemispheric neighbor. Fighting Marxist guerrillas financed by the drug
trade does not make a war that a liberal can love.

The death toll in that war was over 300 for the week ending Dec. 18 as
the FARC launched a new offensive. The casualty list included 10
civilians killed and more than 60 wounded in bombings. As government
and guerrilla negotiators hammered out the holiday cease-fire in the
southern city of Hormiga Dec. 17, a car bomb ripped through the
business district, killed five passers-by and severely wounded scores
more.

Those attacks followed persistent pleas by Pastrana for a Christmas
truce that were regularly rejected by the FARC. But on Dec. 20, the
leftists suddenly offered "a unilateral truce in offensive actions"
through Jan. 9 that Reuters news service described as "extending an
olive branch to the war ravaged country."

Some olive branch, considering the immediate FARC violation of its
"unilateral" truce. "I don't believe in the truce," commented Gen.
Tapias. "What most affects the Colombian people is kidnapping,
extortion and intimidation and if that doesn't stop, we can't talk of
a cease-fire."

What the general could not and did not say is that Colombia is losing
the war. On Dec. 12, FARC guerrillas overran a Colombian naval base
near the Panama border. Stratfor.com, the authoritative private
intelligence source, commented that "the raid highlights a new lack of
Colombian military intelligence." Help from Washington is clearly needed.

Pastrana's daring gesture in 1998 of establishing a huge demilitarized
zone, far from bringing peace, has provided the Marxists with real
estate to build a parallel communist society. A new $10 million offer
from Iran to build infrastructure in the zone looks like the beginning
of a socialist state. Indeed, FARC leaders have insisted on an end to
free-market policies and a cessation to all international debt
payments by Colombia before they will even consider a long-term cease-fire.

In a meeting last autumn with senior House Republicans (including Dan
Burton and Benjamin Gilman), Pastrana said $3 billion in aid is needed
to save his country. The State Department promised $1 billion. But to
the consternation of the Colombians, nothing was approved in the 1999
session-end money jam.

The Colombian Embassy in Washington believed it had found the key to
the Treasury when it hired Vernon Jordan, Washington super-lawyer and
the president's best friend, to lobby for the U.S. aid. The Colombians
did not quite fully appreciate that they were hiring his law firm, not
Jordan (who never has done much lobbying and now is spending most of
his time in New York as an investment banker). Another illusion.

Colombian officials privately grumble that Democratic members are
unenthusiastic about financing an anti-communist guerrilla war that
they fear could suck in the United States, Vietnam style. It will take
some expression of enthusiasm from Bill Clinton to promote help for
Colombia. More likely, things will get worse when the Christmas truce,
such as it is, expires on Sunday.