COLOMBIA GETS RAISE IN US AID

Funding: The country will get $289 million in '99, up from $86 million this
year,mostly to fight drugs.

The Clinton administration initially opposed it,and the Colombian
government was taken by surprise. But a recent congressional initiative,
spurred by direct appeals to conservative Republicans by the Colombian
national police, has more than doubled drug-fighting money to Colombia and
made the country a top recipient of United States foreign aid.

The increase brings the assistance to $289 million for 1999, compared with
$80 million this year. It is mostly in the form of weapons, helicopters and
surveillance planes and will sharply increase the American-supplied
firepower to the Colombian police.

Congressional Republicans are calling it the first installment of a
three-year campaign to reduce substantially the flow of illicit drugs into
the United States.

But critics fear that the huge jump in aid and the heightened U.S. interest
in attacking the drug trade at its source will lure Washington into
supporting the seemingly endless war by Colombia's armed forces against
leftist guerrillas, which has slowly bled Colombia of tens of thousands of
lives and untold resources for more than 30 years.

While the money has been designated for use against drug crop growers and
drug traffickers, much of the equipment could easily be used against the
guerrillas. The equipment will require substantial American training of
pilots, maintenance workers and support staff.

In the appeal for aid by the Colombian police, and in the congressional
response, the distinction between drug traffickers and guerrillas usually
insisted on by officials of the State Department and other American
agencies has become blurred.

Some guerrilla groups are involved in protecting coca crops and landing
strips in southern Colombia and skim a commission from the drug trade. A
report last year by the Colombian drug police estimated that 3,155 of the
country's 15,000 guerrillas were active in the drug trade.

Most of the increase in aid will come as part of a $690 million package of
supplemental appropriations for drug interdiction throughout the hemisphere.

The $165 million in supplemental aid from Congress is in addition to $124
million already appropriated for Colombia, and represents a tenfold
increase in counter-narcotics funding over a five-year period. Roughly 80
percent of the cocaine in the United States originates in Colombia.

"It was a decision that surprised everybody," Colombia's defense minister,
Rodrigo Lloreda, said in an interview. He added that the Clinton
administration had previously supported drug-fighting efforts in Colombia,
"but they kept a certain balance between Colombia, Peru and other countries."

Administration officials like Barry McCaffrey, the retired general who is
in charge of anti-drug efforts, initially complained that the congressional
authorization - which at first specified that $1.2 million should go for
concertina wire around a Bogota prison - "micromanaged" drug policy.

Checked-by: derek rea