U.S. WILL HELP COCA GROWERS SWITCH TO OTHER CROPS

BOGOTA, Colombia -- After long refusing to pay for programs to help
Colombia's coca growers switch to legal crops, the United States is now
agreeing to finance alternative development under this country's new
administration.

While the precise amounts and mechanisms of the help have not been
determined, U.S. officials say that development aid will be part of the
U.S. anti-drug strategy in Colombia.

Colombia's new president, Andres Pastrana, has insisted that aerial
fumigation of drug crops, the cornerstone of U.S. counter-narcotics efforts
here, is useless without providing coca growers with a legal alternative.
He has announced his intention to create what he calls a Marshall Plan for
government investment in coca-growing regions, similar to the U.S.-financed
reconstruction of Western Europe after World War II.

In the past, U.S. officials have given minimal aid -- less than $1 million
a year -- to finance consultants to study alternative development in
Colombia, but no direct assistance for crop substitution work.

In Peru and Bolivia, rural development, in conjunction with eradication or
other law enforcement efforts, has paid off. In Peru, coca production
dropped 40 percent in the last two years; in Bolivia, it declined 7 percent
last year.

But U.S. officials have ruled out such aid for Colombia in the past, citing
distrust of the previous administration of President Ernesto Samper and
rebel dominance of coca-growing regions.

Sergio Uribe, a consultant to the National Drugs Council who advised
Pastrana on drug control strategy during his campaign, called the U.S. move
to support alternative development ``the first admission that American
eradication policy is not working.''

``It's what we've always told them, that eradication for eradication's sake
doesn't work,'' Uribe said.

As the head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, Thomas Constantine,
arrived here to lay wreaths honoring the 143 soldiers and police officers
killed in a pre-inaugural rampage by rebel forces last week, U.S. officials
denied that any Americans were among those killed or taken hostage.

A rebel commander, Jorge Briceno of the the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia, or FARC, had been quoted in the daily El Espectador as saying
that Americans were among those abducted by the group during the
hostilities.

``No American citizen was captured or killed during the recent guerrilla
attacks in Colombia,'' a U.S. Embassy statement said. The attacks covered
half the countryside and leveled the counter-narcotics base at Miraflores.
About 300 Colombians were killed, and 124 police officers and soldiers were
abducted.

In a letter of condolence to Pastrana, sent hours before his inauguration
last Friday and made public in Bogota, President Clinton pledged $2 million
to help internal refugees, and promised to seek congressional approval for
stepping up aid to the military and police.

``We also propose to increase our other assistance to Colombia to include
support for a multi-year alternative development program and for justice
sector reforms and human rights,'' Clinton wrote.

Pastrana has made peace negotiations with Colombia's 20,000 armed rebels a
priority of his administration. The rebels have indicated they would
curtail the drug trade among peasants in zones they control as part of a
peace accord. But some see the offer as a gambit to gain autonomy over
parts of eastern Colombia, from which the rebels could launch further
attacks after signing a peace accord.

U.S. officials are skeptical that the rebels, who are estimated to earn
hundreds of millions of dollars a year for protecting coca crops and
laboratories, would seriously curtail trafficking. ``That would be like
killing the goose that lays the golden egg,'' one said. Last week's attack
on Miraflores has only heightened their doubts.

U.S. officials are saying that aid for alternative development would flow
only to areas where the government has established control. The aid could
be a way to strengthen the state presence, whose absence peasants in remote
regions cite as one reason for guerrilla control.

U.S. officials, who insisted on anonymity, said that aid might not take the
form of crop substitution, but could involve finding other ways for
reformed coca growers to make a living, like development of local industry.
Most Colombians live in rural areas, but their country's economic opening
in the early 1990s destroyed the market for traditional domestic crops.

White House anti-drug chief Barry McCaffrey told reporters last week that
eradication would remain ``the central aspect of U.S. counternarcotics
thinking.'' He added, ``That can't be taken off the table.''

Thursday, as a new military high command took over, Miraflores remained in
a state of ``red alert,'' beyond government control, a police spokesman
here said.

Pastrana replaced Gen. Manuel Jose Bonett, chief of the Combined Armed
Forces, and other senior commanders with officers who have openly supported
a peace agreement with the rebels.

The military is particularly discredited now. Investigations have shown
government soldiers were beaten after commanders failed to back up units
under rebel attack. The military's budget largely benefits senior officers,
while foot soldiers often go hungry, military experts here say.

Two senior officers are under investigation for ties to right-wing
paramilitary death squads, which traffic in drugs. A third, Gen. Ivan
Ramirez, lost his U.S. visa because of his alleged ties to the death
squads.

A Washington Post report that Ramirez was also a paid informant for the
U.S. CIA has caused a stir in Colombia.

Checked-by: (Joel W. Johnson)