CLINTON SAYS NO DIRECT U.S. ROLE IN COLOMBIA -REPORT

CHICAGO (Reuters) - President Clinton said the United States should not be
drawn into direct involvement in Colombia's long-running civil war,
according to an interview released Friday.

"I'm going to keep trying to help Colombia," Clinton told Telemundo
Spanish-language television in an interview given Thursday. "But I don't
think we should be.

"I don't think it would work, and I think it would actually hurt the cause
of freedom and the integrity of governments in Latin America," Clinton said.

Clinton noted that Colombia gets the third-largest chunk of U.S. foreign
aid after Israel and Egypt, and said he was "very concerned about the
combination of the narco-traffickers and the people that have been engaged
in the civil war down there totally destabilizing Colombia."

However, he said, "if we were to become directly involved, I think it would
ensure a disastrous result for the Colombian government, and people would
accuse us of being imperialists in some way."

Colombia's three-decade-old conflict, which pits guerrillas against
ultra-right death squads and state security forces, has claimed more than
35,000 lives and forced more than a million civilians to flee their homes
in just the last 10 years.