COLOMBIA'S DRUG-BEDEVILLED HOPES OF PEACE

BOGOTA -- The United States made life hard for Colombia's recently departed
president. It may be about to do the same for its new one

IT WAS never going to be easy for President Andres Pastrana to fulfil his
election promise of bringing peace to Colombia after nearly four decades of
civil war. He faced an uphill struggle merely to bring the army, the
guerrillas and the country's paramilitaries anywhere near a negotiating
table. Now, it looks as though he may also face an obstacle from an
unexpected quarter: the United States.

On September 24th, Mr Pastrana was in Washington, hoping to win support for
his peace initiative, the centrepiece of his agenda. He had reasonable
hopes of help: though the Americans had undermined the presidency of
Ernesto Samper, whom they said had ties to drugs mobs, they cheered Mr
Pastrana's election victory in June. Yet the lengths to which he had to go
to win support for his plan have left Colombians wondering whether the
United States understands exactly how much is at stake.

The heart of the matter is Mr Pastrana's agreement to demilitarise five
municipalities in southern Colombia, an area roughly the size of El
Salvador, as a precondition for talks with the country's most powerful
guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The
Americans howled that this might interrupt the aerial eradication of coca
in the southQa controversial plan carried out chiefly at the Americans'
insistence, using their money and equipment. They seem fixated, even though
the scheme has done nothing to reduce the total amount of coca grown in
Colombia.

Mr Pastrana seems to understand this. He prefers to view coca cultivation
as a social problem, with roots in the migration and poverty caused by
decades of political violence. Now that a Colombian president is ready to
acknowledge the extent to which drugs have shaped his country' s conflict,
a solution might conceivably be found.

Frustratingly, American insistence that the war on drugs must come above
all else may get in the way of the search for peace. Just before Mr
Pastrana got to Washington, the American House of Representatives had
passed a measure that would cut off anti-drugs aid to Colombia if the
government disrupted the coca-eradication scheme by its demilitarisation
plan. Mr Pastrana struggled to convince Mr Clinton's officials of the
wisdom of his peace plan. Officials at the American embassy in Bogota have
voiced strong support for Mr Pastrana, in contrast to the criticism the
combative former ambassador, Myles Frechette, heaped on Mr Samper. But they
too insist that peace plans must not get in the way of anti-drugs operations.

Why, ask perplexed Colombians, is the United States so determined to pursue
its dead-end coca-eradication policy, even at the price of peace? And why
mainly in the FARC's southern strongholds? They point out that the United
States' anti-drugs efforts in Colombia leave areas of cultivation outside
the south largely untouched.

Cordoba and Antioquia, provinces near the Panamanian border, highlight this
bias. The north-west is a traditional hub of the drugs trade: it contains
smaller but important areas of coca cultivation, and its heroin trade is
said to be the lifeblood of the paramilitaries that dominate the region.
Most of the country's drugs exports, and its arms imports, pass through the
area. Carlos Castano, the country's most powerful paramilitary warlord, has
his headquarters there; American drugs officials have fingered him as a
major trafficker. And few guerrillas operate in the area, which might make
a crackdown easier. Yet the Americans do not seem to be pushing at all for
a drugs clampdown in theregion.

The reason, suspect conspiracy theorists, is old cold-war thinking: the
United States is willing to tolerate drugs-running by right-wing groups,
but not by leftists. The answer may be different--ignorance perhaps.
Whatever the real explanation, Mr Pastrana did score a victory of sorts in
Washington: he won a ``partial agreement'' from the Clinton administration
to go ahead with his demilitarisation plans.

That deals with one of the FARC's main demands. Others, such as an exchange
of political prisoners for kidnapped soldiers, are thorny but negotiable.
Meanwhile, the smaller guerrilla group, the National Liberation Army, will
hold its own ``talks about talks'' at a national convention with government
and other representatives later this month. But whatever progress is made
with the guerrillas may be undone by a bigger obstacle: disagreement over
the exact nature, and proper role in the peace talks, of the paramilitaries.

Manuel ``Sureshot'' Marulanda, the FARC's leader, insists that no
substantial developments are possible until Mr Pastrana ``calls off the
dogs''. That is an unsubtle reference to the fact that the state often
knows exactly what the supposedly independent paramilitaries are up to.
Indeed, Jose Miguel Vivanco, director of Human Rights Watch-Americas, says
he has evidence --in contradiction of what the army says-- showing that, in
some of Colombia's most violent areas, military units directly promote or
support paramilitary activity.

Paramilitary leaders, who now meet regularly to plot strategy, are trying
to bludgeon their way to political status and a place at the negotiating
table. Both guerrilla groups are resisting that. But whether anyone has the
means or the will to rein in the paramilitaries is doubtful.

Unless the dirty alliance between some senior army officers and the
paramilitary thugs is broken, there can be no real hope for peace. That is
because the paramilitary units, already ascendant, will surely expand their
operationsQthus upsetting the fragile, temporary balance of forces that has
allowed the current flurry of peace efforts to emerge. If Colombian and
American officials do not have the courage to expose the paramilitary
groups for what they are, the future is bleak. The country may end up
merely stumbling about in search of peace. The paramilitaries and their
allies may then decide they are strong enough to unleash the kind of bloody
attacks on the guerrillas that hardliners have been calling for all along.
Millions of decent Colombians are hoping otherwise.

Checked-by: Richard Lake