U.S. DRUG CZAR SEEKS RE-EVALUATION OF AID TO COLOMBIA AMID VIOLENCE

WASHINGTON -- The White House drug czar, fresh from a trip to Colombia,
called on the Clinton administration Monday to re-evaluate U.S. aid to the
Bogota government amid a new round of violence in the South American
country.

Although retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey did not spell out what he meant
by re-evaluating the aid, he has called in the past for increased U.S.
funding to help Bogota step up its war on drugs.

McCaffrey's call for a re-evaluation came after an especially bloody weekend
in Colombia. At least 28 people were killed in rebel attacks since Friday,
the same day a new attempt to restart peace talks broke down between
negotiators for the government and the country's largest guerrilla group,
the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by its Spanish initials
FARC.

A car bomb ripped through the Medellin headquarters of a specialized
anti-kidnapping military unit on Friday, killing 10 and injuring 30. The
same day, government spokesmen said, about 400 FARC rebels launched an
attack on a police station in the remote town of Narino, about 100 miles
northwest of Bogota.

The rebels killed 17 people, including four children, and lost one of their
own in heavy fighting, that also destroyed the police station, a clinic and
several homes, the spokesmen said. The rebels escaped with eight hostages,
$30,000 in bank funds and a haul of handguns, mortars and grenades.

The spike in rebel activity in Colombia has heightened concerns in
Washington that the line between counterinsurgency operations and the battle
against drugs is being erased and that the United States' role in the
overall conflict is growing.

Colombia is already the third-largest recipient of U.S. military aid after
Israel and Egypt, receiving $289 million in assistance this year. The
government of President Andres Pastrana has requested another $500 million
in military aid over the next two years. Some 300 U.S. advisers rotate
through the country, helping to train Colombian troops engaged in anti-drug
operations.

"At some point Secretary (of State Madeleine) Albright and Attorney General
Janet Reno and Secretary (of Defense William) Cohen and all of us involved
in this will have to reevaluate a dynamic situation that's going in the
wrong direction in Colombia," McCaffrey said at a White House briefing.

McCaffrey said that Colombia had doubled coca production in three years,
contrasting it with Peru, where he said coca production had been cut by 56
percent, and Bolivia, where he said it had dropped by 22 percent, over the
same period.

McCaffrey blamed what he called Colombia's "narco-guerrillas" -- the FARC
rebels -- for the boom. He asserted that the FARC earns up to $600 million a
year from the drug trade, which, he said, is used to fund the insurgency.

McCaffrey said the administration "probably ought to provide training; we
ought to provide intelligence, where appropriate, as long as it's focused on
the counter-drug mission; equipment, where appropriate; and political
support in a regional sense for the peace process. And I think that's what
we'll try and do."

In July, McCaffrey called for anti-drug aid to South America to be tripled
to about $1 billion next year, a large slice of which would be destined for
Colombia.

The violence ripped through this country as negotiators for the Pastrana
government and the FARC on Friday ended a meeting seeking to establish the
groundwork to continue peace talks that collapsed on July 17.

The session broke down when the FARC refused to accept an international
commission to monitor their activities in a demilitarized zone in southern
Colombia, an area four times larger than the Serbian province of Kosovo and
home to some 90,000.

The FARC is suspected of having executed 11 people in the area recently, and
used it as a base to launch a brutal offensive on July 8 that left more than
300 people dead.

In New York, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan expressed concern
at the increasing violence in Colombia and called on both sides to keep
trying to find a peaceful solution.

Some 120,000 people have been killed in 35 years of civil war in Colombia.

The on-again, off-again peace process has lurched along fitfully since
formal talks began on Jan. 7.

Meanwhile Pastrana held out an olive branch to the National Liberation Army,
the country's second-largest rebel force with some 5,000 fighters.

He said he was ready to talk with them -- on the condition they release the
estimated 64 civilians they are holding hostage.