U.S. SEEKS NEW WAYS TO CURB COLOMBIAN DRUG TRADE

Pentagon planners have a recurring nightmare: It's October 2000, days
before the U.S. elections, and Colombia's Marxist rebels are storming the
capital of Bogota - with TV coverage of guerrillas running through the
streets as the U.S.-supported government teeters on the brink of collapse.

The nightmare seems increasingly plausible to many in the administration,
given the Colombian army's weak performance against the guerrillas and the
out-of-control drug production in rural areas controlled by the insurgents.

To avoid that scenario, U.S. military and policy planners are scrambling to
find new ways to combat Colombian drug production - and the guerrillas.

At the U.S. Army War College's second annual seminar on Colombia earlier
this month, policy specialists disagreed about how best to stop the flood
of cocaine and what actions should be taken against the hemisphere's
largest rebel group.

But one message was clear: Do something quickly, in less than a year - and
put it in the U.S. anti-drug package.

``You have an opening right now and an interest from the highest levels of
the U.S. government on Colombia. We very rarely get that,'' Pentagon drug
specialist Ana Maria Salazar told Colombian and U.S. military brass
attending the seminar in Carlisle, Pa.

``Our interests only hold for about one year, probably less. This is it,''
said Salazar, a deputy assistant defense secretary for drug-enforcement
policies. ``The way we view programs right now, they have to be programs
that in many ways are going to have a short-term effect.''

Colombia - which produces 80 percent of the world's cocaine and supplies
most of the heroin used in the United States - now ranks as the
third-largest recipient of U.S. aid, following - although by a very wide
margin - Israel and Egypt. Anti-drug aid to Colombia totaled $289 million
this year. The White House drug-policy director, Barry McCaffrey, has
called for an increase to about $500 million.

U.S. aid is supposed to be used almost entirely for counter-narcotics
operations, not for the war against the guerrillas.

Salazar said: ``We will not be giving support to programs where we see that
they are 100 percent . . . to affect the subversives.'' But if military
programs are related to the drug war, she said, ``We will be able to spend
money to support Colombia in the short term.''