LOSING THE DRUG WAR / NO HELP FROM THEIR FRIENDS IN THE U.S.

Colombia's Quagmire Deepens

BOGOTA---Andres Pastrana took over as president of Colombia last year
amid high hopes in the country and in Washington, too, that he could
bring an end to years of violence, drug trafficking and government
deficits. But by most measurements, the situation worsened.

Although Mr. Pastrana kept his pledge to begin negotiations to end a
40-year war with Marxist guerrillas, progress at the bargaining table
has been slow.

As the guerrillas continue to battle---and beat--- the Colombian Army,
drug cultivation in the vast territory they control has continued to
increase.

For the Clinton administration, President Pastrana's leading foreign
supporter, the belief that peace was achievable and would provide a
victory in Washington's drug war has descended into gloomy
uncertainty.

The administration continues to support the negotiations---set to
begin this week--- as the best long-term anti-drug strategy.

But it has largely lost control of its Colombia policy to a small
group of conservative Republicans in the House of Representatives who
accuse President Bill Clinton of "coddling narco-terrorists."

The partisan feuding in Washington, according to Mr. Pastrana's
colleagues, has only exacerbated Colombia's problems.

"It's very difficult for us," said a senior Colombian diplomat. " It
reminds us of Central America. To make peace doable, in today's world
you need the support of the United States."

The problem is, he went on, that the Washington policy war is drawing
attention away from the peace process.

"We are the ham in the U.S. sandwich," said Mr. Pastrana, whose
election ended years of U.S. ostracism of Colombia under his aliegedly
corrupt and. drug-tainted predecessor.

Now, President Pastrana said in a recent interview, Colombia's policy
has become more useful as a tool "for hitting your government than for
helping or hurting our government."

Meanwhile, as Mr. Pastrana frets and Washington quarrels with itself,
Colombians used to living on the edge fear they are about to fall off.

Cocaine production is up 28 percent, and the diversification of drug
mafias into heroin has made Colombia the biggest supplier to the U.S.
East Coast.

Despite its agreement to come to the negotiating table, the biggest of
Colombia's three rebel groups ---the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia, FARC by its Spanish initials---is bigger, richer and better
armed than ever before.

FARC and two smaller insurgent groups together took in an estimated
$900 million in "taxes" imposed on drug traffickers for protecting
cultivation zones. The rebels and the army are accused of widespread
human rights abuses.

Kidnapping for ransom---the-rebels' second biggest source of
income---has reached terrifying proportions, with a dozen American
victims and many more Colombians this year. Many of the victims have
been killed, even after the ransom has been paid, and the State
Department has strongly warned U.S. citizens against traveling here.

International organizations estimate that as many as a million
Colombians have left their homes, fleeing the fighting or fearing
reprisals from one rebel gfOUp for-alleged sympathy with another---a
number exceeding the exodus from the Serbian province of Kosovo.

Refugees, drug lords and warfare have begun to spill across Colombia's
borders into Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Brazil and Panama, threatening
to destabilize the entire region.

Just as ominously, at least for Colombia's well-to-do elite and
sophisticated business community, the economy has gone from bad to
worse. The only country.in Latin America to have consistent economic
growth over recent decades, Colombia this year moved into the negative
column.

Last month, its credit rating was downgraded in New York, making it
more difficult to try to recover from a major January earthquake that
devastated stretches of the main coffee-growing region.

Mr. Pastrana has now met three times with FARC leaders. Negotiating
teams have been named, a joint agenda established, and the first
negotiating session is set for Wednesday---far more than any other
Colombian government has achieved.

The rebels, he said, are tired after four decades of fighting, and
want to be part of modern Colombia.

But in the absence of tangible results from the talks, many
Colombians, even among the majority who .strongly support Mr.
Pastrana's initiative, are worried that their president is giving up
far more than he is getting.

In a bold but risky move that ultimately led to the reslgnation in May
of his defense minister and threats of a walkout by most of the army
generals, Mr. Pastrana agreed to a FARC demand to withdraw the army
from an isolated zone of south-central Colombia where the guerrillas
had long prevailed.

Although the army is gone, Mr. Pastrana insist:ed that the government
has more presence there than ever before. "Practically every senior
official of the government has been there," he said. "American
congressmen have even been there, " ihcluding a June delegation of
House staffers led by Representative William Delahunt, Democrat of
Massachusetts.

Late last month, Mr. Pastrana persuaded Richard Grasso, chairman of
the New York Stock Exchange, to travel to the area to impress on FARC
leaders that, without their cooperation, there may not be much of
Colombia left to fight over.

Mr. Grasso told reporters he had stressed "the opportunities capital
markets will present to Colombia when a peace is achieved." .

But FARC has rejected a cease-fire has continued fighting and has done
little of substance other than show up at the negotiating table.

"We need some kind of gesture from the guerrillas for us to start to
believe" in the negotiations said Juan Manuel Santos, an opposition
leader.

President Pastrana said he recognized that time was running out, and
has told FARC leaders "many times" that they need to build public
"confidence in the process." A useful first step, he said, would be
"to pledge their respect for international humanitarian law."

"Give up kidnapping and terrorism---that would be a gesture to start
the talks off right," he said.

Meanwhile, the mere launching, af the peace initiative with FARC
appears to have made the security situation worse. Both the guerrilla
National Liberation Army and a powerful right-wing
paramilitarycarmy---originally formed by landowners to combat the
guerrillas but now deepty involved in drugs and terror itself---have
steppekl up operations out of what is seen here as fear they will be
left out of any new political arrangement.

"I am skeptical of a Colombian peace process that results in 16,000
square miles of territory being given to narco-guerrillas, who work
hand-in-hand with the world's most dangerous drug dealers,"
Representative Benjamin Gilman, the New York Republican who is
chairrnan of the House International Relations Committee, said last
week in the latest of a drumbeat of statements opposing the Colombian
process.