COLOMBIA'S PASTRANA: U.S. IS POLITICIZING DRUG WAR

BOGOTA (Reuters) -- President Andres Pastrana on Sunday accused Washington
of playing politics with Colombia's drug war, and said it was one of the
worst possible things to happen to U.S.-Colombian ties.

Pastrana's public broadside, aimed especially at U.S. Republican leaders,
marked his first
reaction to a controversial amendment to an anti-drug bill passed by the
U.S. House of Representatives last week. The amendment was backed by Rep.
Benjamin Gilman, the New York Republican who heads the House International
Relations Committee and a figure seen, until last week, as one of Colombia's
few true "friends" on Capitol Hill.

The legislation would make Colombia ineligible for U.S.
counternarcotics aid, if anti-drug efforts are hampered in any way by
Pastrana's plan to order a troop pullout from a vast swath of
Colombian territory later this year to promote peace talks with
Marxist rebels.

Pastrana, who took office just last month, stopped short in his
remarks to reporters of accusing the Republican-controlled House of
seeking to torpedo his country's nascent peace process. But he said
Washington had openly "politicized" the drug issue.

"They politicized it for Colombia, and it's the worst thing that has
happened to us in the last four years," he said.

U.S.-Colombian ties sank to historic lows under Pastrana's
predecessor, Ernesto Samper, because of charges that he bankrolled his
1994 election campaign with drug money. But Pastrana signalled that
they could get even worse, if U.S. lawmakers insist on making a
partisan issue out of Colombia's anti-drug fight.

Pastrana said most U.S. Democrats supported his campaign pledge to
provide Colombia's peasants with viable alternatives to the
cultivation of illicit opium poppy crops and coca, the raw material
for cocaine. Democrats understand that "we can't just talk about
repression, fumigation and eradication," he said, referring to the
tactics Colombia has pursued aggressively in its U.S.-backed fight
against illicit drug crops so far. Pastrana said Republican lawmakers
were more close-minded, however, and were insisting on "the simple
thesis of an all-out war against drug trafficking" -- with a continued
focus on aerial spraying of drug crops with herbicides.

Government officials have agreed to continue the fumigation programme
for now, which is the most ambitious of its kind in Latin America. But
they quietly insist that it is doing serious ecological damage, has
pushed a growing number of peasants into jungle-covered areas under
rebel control, and failed to a halt a steady increase in the number of
illicit drug plantations cropping up across Colombia.

Crop substitution, and tentative rebel offers to participate in the
manual uprooting of drug crops in areas under their influence, are
among the issues that Pastrana has said the government will discuss
with Colombia's leading rebel group when full-fledged peace talks
begin in the demilitarized zone. The talks are likely to begin by
mid-November.

Government officials say Pastrana will explain his ideas about the
peace process, and about alternative ways of fighting the drug war, in
talks with U.S. congressional leaders next Thursday when he stops in
Washington on his return from the U.N. General Assembly in New York.

The stopover in Washington was hastily scheduled after last
Wednesday's vote in the House, and government officials hope it will
block passage of the so-called "anti-Colombia" amendment in the Senate.

Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited

Checked-by: Rich O'Grady