U.S. CONVEYS CONCERN OVER CIVIL STRIFE IN COLOMBIA

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

Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering, who arrived late Monday, met 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.

But with peace talks faltering, desperate Colombians requesting U.S. visas
in record numbers, and illegal drug plantations expanding in the world's No.
1 cocaine-exporting nation, Colombia's future is far from certain.

Clinton administration officials "sense that they're maybe losing control of
things in that region," said Michael Shifter of the Inter-American Dialogue,
a Washington think tank. Pickering's trip is the highest-level U.S.
diplomatic visit to Colombia in nearly a decade.

U.S. policy in Colombia also has become a hot partisan issue on Capitol
Hill.

The country will receive nearly $300 million in U.S. military assistance
this year -- making it the third largest foreign recipient. But Republican
lawmakers say the Clinton administration has ignored the growing threat of
rebels who finance themselves by protecting the cocaine trade.

Colombia is seeking $500 million in U.S. military aid -- principally for
helicopters and high-tech communications gear -- to help it regain the upper
hand against the 15,000-strong Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or
FARC.

Critics worry that Washington will be bankrolling a military that has
tolerated -- and at times directly supported -- right-wing paramilitary
groups who've massacred thousands of civilians.

U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, writing an op-ed article in The
New York Times on Tuesday, urged more progress in severing those deadly ties
but said the military had "dramatically improved" its rights record.

"President Pastrana was right to initiate talks," she wrote. "The question
is whether he can muster a combination of pressure and incentives that will
cause the guerrillas to respond."

In a move widely criticized in Washington, Pastrana cleared all his troops
from a massive southern region in November, effectively ceding the area to
the FARC. The rebels have not reciprocated, however. Talks are stalled and
FARC attacks continue.

U.S. officials say the group earns between $200 million and $600 million
annually by protecting and taxing drug operations in the vast areas it
controls. While not close to toppling Colombia's democratic government, the
FARC is now the only authority in about 40 percent of the countryside.