A U.S. OFFICIAL CONSULTS WITH COLOMBIA ON DRUGS

BOGOTA -- Reflecting growing alarm in Washington about leftist rebels
strengthened by the cocaine trade, a top U.S. diplomat has met with
Colombia's president to discuss drug trafficking and the country's civil war.

Thomas Pickering, the U.S. undersecretary of state, met Tuesday with
President Andres Pastrana, who vowed when he took office a year ago to
battle drug trafficking and negotiate an end to the country's 35-year civil
war.

The two men discussed "the growth of narco-trafficking, especially among
guerrilla movements" ' and U.S. military aid and training for Colombian
security forces, Mr. Pickering said,

The highest-ranking U.S. diplomat in Colombia in nearly a decade, Mr.
Pickering arrived on a two-day visit Monday night amid concern that Mr.
Pastrana's quest for peace is getting nowhere, as guerrilla and
paramilitary violence begin to threaten regional stability.

He comes at a time when peace talks ate faltering, desperate Colombians are
requesting U.S. visas in record numbers and illegal drug plantations are
expanding in the No. I cocaine-exporting nation.

U.S. attention was sharpened last month by the death of five U.S. soldiers
whose surveillance plane crashed while on a counternarcotics mission over
rebel-dominated territory here.

A new U.S. policy of sharing electronic intelligence with Colombia's
beIeaguered military U.S. training of a counternarcotics battalion, and the
visit last week by the White House drug czar, Barry McCaffrey, have led
Colombian media to speculate that direct U.S. military intervention is
imminent - or that Washington is trying to form a multinational Latin
American force.

Mr. Pickering called such speculation ,"totally crazy."

"There is no intention on the United States' part to intervene, no request
from Colombia to do so, no crusade by the United States to develop any kind
of regional grouping with respect to Colombia," he said at a news
conference at the Presidential Palace.

Colombia will receive nearly $300 million in U.S. military assistance this
year.