HOUR OF DECISION HAS ARRIVED IN COLOMBIAN CRISIS

ARIQUITA, Colombia -- A war for control of northern South America and the
Panama Canal has been under way for some time. Trouble is, the Clinton
administration has paid little attention, focused as it has been on crises
elsewhere.

Now the war is escalating, and President Clinton is forced into difficult,
dangerous decisions: How much further involved to get? Exactly how, and
with whom?

Colombia is the central battlefield, but the fight is spreading to
Venezuela, principal supplier of foreign oil to the United States. And on
into Ecuador to the west, and Peru and Brazil on Colombia's southern
borders. Also to the north -- into Panama.

Keep in mind that the United States is to hand over the Panama Canal to the
shaky Panamanian government in a few months. Southern Panama, just below
the canal, has been so overrun by drug lords connected to Colombian
revolutionary forces that fearful Panamanian leaders no longer send troops
into the area.

An old Marxist-style revolutionary movement has been active in Colombia for
about 40 years. At one time, it was supported by the Soviet Union and Cuba.
But through the 1960s, '70s and '80s, it remained small and mostly
ineffective.

With the breakup of the Soviet empire, Colombia's revolutionaries were
further weakened. Then, beginning in the early l990s, they got a break. A
determined Bush administration campaign to wreck the urban drug cartels in
Medellin and Cali splintered the power of drug thugs. This drove the
narcotics power bases into the countryside. And into the arms of the old
revolutionaries.

While Colombia's remarkably uncorrupted national police force continues to
be effective against some individual cocaine and heroin operations, the
force is understaffed and outgunned. Meanwhile, Colombia's military is
demonstrating anew how ineffective it is.

There are no easy choices for the United States in this increasingly
dangerous and exceptionally complicated dilemma.

The Colombians neither want nor need an infusion of large U.S. combat
forces. But they are begging for more equipment, more training, more
intelligence-gathering help and more money.

A year ago, Colombia elected a new president, Andres Pastrana. The Clinton
administration liked him from the start, but worried about his government's
ties to right-wing paramilitary groups, which are heavily into the drug
business and have a record of civil rights abuses. So Washington has
hesitated regarding the kind of help Colombia needs.

Now, as ideological revolutionaries and drug outfits in Colombia mushroom
with power and make bolder moves into neighboring countries, the United
States is beginning to consider a major change in policy. Because
destabilization of the region could present a clear and present danger to
U.S. security.

Like it or not, choices must be made, and this is the hour of decision.