NEW, WORRY ON ROLE OF U.S. TROOPS AND CIA IN COLOMBIA DRUG WAR

BOGOTA - Back in 1982, when U.S. leaders feared communism more than
cocaine, Vice President George Bush attended the inauguration here of
President Belisario Betancur and offered him a U.S. military ban to
keep an eye on his country's leftist insurgents, according to a
Colombian official of that era.

Wary of such a high-profile U.S. presence, Mr. Betancur demurred, but
he did agree to let the Americans install radar stations for
surveillance. By 1990, relations were cordial enough that a group of
U.S. military advisers reviewed Colombia's military intelligence
organizations and recommended changes. Hundreds more soldiers,
Marines, Coast Guard personnel and CIA and Drug Enforcement
Administration agents have since fol-lowed them to Colombia.

Today, Americans assist in operating five jungle radar stations, fly
drug-eradicating crop dusters and are working to redesign the
Colombian Army into a more effective drug-fighting force. They also
pilot spy planes like the one that crashed into a Colombian mountain
last month, killing all seven crew members, including five U.S. Army
aviators.

The crash of that plane has raised questions about what exactly 200 or
more U . S. Department of Defense employees -- both civilian and
military -- are doing in Colombia. And that is not counting the
unknown number of agents of the Central Intelligence Agency and the
Drug Enforcement Agency, or DEA.

Are they here to combat drugs, or are they harbingers of another U.S.
venture into an inwar with Marxist guerrillas? And what happens to the
information gleaned by U.S. spies?

The standard answer from U.S. military officials is that most are
involved in training missions and that none are involved in combating
the Marxist guerrillas who have been fighting the Colombian government
for more than three decades. The numbers are unusually high now -- 283
on Aug. 10 -- because of investigations into the crash of the De
Havilland RC-7 last month, said Lieutenant Colonel Bill Darley, a
Pentagon spokesman.

"Two hundred people scattered over a country, "Colonel Darley said,
are nott hat much."-

Upon his return Monday to Washington Monday from a trip to Colombia,
Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering dismissed the possibility
that more U.S. troops would be deployed.

"That is not our policy," he said.

But many political and human rights analysts recall that until 1996
the Pentagon also denied that the U.S. military advisers in El
Salvador-officially never more than 55 at a time -- were involved in
combat against the country's leftist guerrillas in the 1980s. Such
concerns have been heightened as U.S. officials point to the strong
ties between rebels and drug traffickers to justify the growth in U.S.
antinarcotics assistance to Colombia.

Colombian rebels get an estimated $600 million a year in "taxes" on
opium poppies and coca -- the raw material for cocaine -- grown in
territory under their control. Colombia supplies about three-fourths
of the cocaine and a growing share of the heroin consumed in the
United States.

To curb that supply, the United States has budgeted $289 million in
anti-narcotics aid for Colombia this year, with the restriction that
the money not be used to fight the rebels. Colombian military leaders
say they also need U.S. help with intelligence.

"The population is involved with the guerrillas, so we cannot get
intelligence, from them," said General Fernando Tapias, head of the
Colombian armed forces. In contrast, the rebels seem to have quite a
reliable network to tell them when the army and police plan to attack
a cocaine laboratory, he said. Often, the labs have been moved or no
one is there.

U.S. intelligence technology, such as the De Havilland RC-7 or the
radar stations, thus becomes crucial. The concern is that the
information obtained, analyzed and provided to the Colombian military
may be leaked to rightist private armies. Estimated to have a troop
strength of about 5,000, these groups fight the rebels mainly by
attacking civilians believed to support the insurgency.

"Members of the armed forces are involved in promoting the actions of
the paramilitaries," said Teofilo Vasquez, a researcher at -the Center
for Research and Popular Education, a Colombian group that studies
human. rights issues.

Several high-ranking 'Colombian military officers have been relieved
of their commands pending investigations into allegations that they
had ties to armed right-wing groups.