U.S. To Send Arms to Fight Drugs in Colombia but Skeptics Abound

By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO

BOGOTA, Colombia Deepening its involvement in a country that it has held
at arm's length for years, the United States has approved sending more than
$50 million in equipment to help Colombia's military fight guerrillas
involved in drug trafficking in the south.

The aid was granted after the military promised to improve its protection
of human rights. Colombia is grappling with increasingly violent rebels who
have formed alliances to drug traffickers across the country, especially in
the south.

While the United States stipulated that the aid, approved this summer, be
used solely to fight drug trafficking, the commander of the Colombian armed
forces says the materiel all considered to be nonlethal could be used
to fight insurgents anywhere in the area identified by U.S. officials,
essentially the southern half of the country.

In an interview here, the commander, Gen. Jose Manuel Bonett, said the aid
could be used against guerrillas in the zone whether or not they are
involved in drugs. "It's the same organization, and everyone in it is
responsible," he said. "You can't say this guerrilla front is good and this
one is bad."

Approval for the aid came through special presidential authority and is
contingent on confirmation that the units getting the materiel have not
been accused of violating human rights. The confirmation is to be provided
by the Colombian military.

Gen. Barry McCaffrey, architect of the White House antidrug efforts, who
visited here this week, said the aid did not represent a policy change.
Colombia would normally be ineligible for military aid because President
Clinton has ruled that it is not fighting drugs with vigor.

In September 1996 and again last summer, President Clinton invoked special
authority to provide equipment and supplies for antidrug efforts in
Colombia. He also waived a ban on military sales on the ground that it was
important to the United States' national security. But that aid was also
contingent on an agreement by the Colombian police and armed forces to
observe human rights.

The police agreed to such conditions quickly. But the military only
accepted the conditions in August.

The accord says the aid is to go only to areas "characterized by the
highest concentration of counternarcotics activity." It also stipulates
procedures by which the United States is supposed to monitor the military's
use of the aid.

But the agreement raises the difficult question of arming a military well
known for abusing human rights, especially when the materiel might be used
to put down insurgency among the military's enemies rather than to fight
drugs.

McCaffrey said to reporters here, "Let there be no doubt: We are not taking
part in counterguerrilla operations."

Yet critics of the deal abound, and they include some Clinton
administration officials. "It is very difficult to put your finger on which
guerrillas are doing what," one State Department official said.

The State Department, the National Security Council and the Drug
Enforcement Administration all advised McCaffrey against visiting Colombia
and shaking hands with President Ernesto Samper. Samper was accused of
accepting $6 million in campaign contributions from drug traffickers, but
he was cleared by the Colombian Congress.

But speaking to American reporters here on Monday night, he said Washington
needed to rebuild its relationship with Bogota before presidential
elections in seven months.

There has also been strong antidrug pressure from Congress. The decision
to send materiel as part of this fight "wasn't driven by foreign concerns,
but by domestic ones," one senior official said. The military aid is part
of a $150 million package to fight drugs, triple the amount Washington sent
last year. About $100 million is to go the police, who do not share the
army's poor rights record.

Much of the debate centers on the politically charged term
"narcoguerrillas." The word is part of the vocabulary of the Colombian
military, but has been publicly disputed by the U.S. ambassador to
Colombia, Myles Frechette. And Rodrigo Losada, a professor at Javeriana
University in Bogota, says acceptance of the term "narcoguerrilla" opened
the way for the army to use the supplies against guerrillas in the name of
fighting drugs.

During his visit, McCaffrey repeatedly used "narcoguerrillas" to refer to
the leftist militias. "It seems to us that poor Colombia is bleeding not
only because of drugs, but because it has 15,000 narcoguerrillas machine
guns, automatic weapons, mortars, land mines and an enormous brutality," he
added.

The general said rightwing militias, who lawenforcement say are
responsible for twothirds of the politically motivated killings in this
country, are also involved in drug trafficking, but he singled out the
leftists for scorn.

A government report ordered by Frechette said that only some guerrilla
groups protected coca fields and processing laboratories, and that they
taxed growers and charged traffickers fees at remote airstrips, much as
they extorted protection money from ranchers and coffee growers. The report
also said rebels hinder antidrug efforts by attacking aircraft and
organizing protests against the eradication of coca, the source of cocaine.

But it also said the role of the guerrillas in the drug trade more as
parasites than as traffickers was not increasing. And some cocagrowing
peasants have also said the guerrillas sometimes force them to limit the
land used for coca, and to grow food for their families instead.

Even McCaffrey said he suspected that guerrilla activity in the designated
antidrug zone largely involved efforts by the rebels to extort money from
traffickers.

The supplies to be sent to Colombia, from Pentagon and other government
stocks, are to include UH1H Huey helicopters, C26 surveillance planes,
ammunition for assault rifles, utility vehicles, small boats and
navigational equipment. And Congress is debating whether to give $50
million more to the police in the form of three Blackhawk helicopters.

U.S. military assistance to Colombia ended in 1994, after the General
Accounting Office found that such aid had gone to units accused of
violating human rights, and that it was being used to fight guerrillas
instead of drug traffickers. The GAO also said the conditions for the aid,
which resemble those being applied now, had been ignored.

Frechette said he was confident the U.S. Embassy could monitor the army's
rights record, but there are difficulties: Colombian prosecutors are barred
from disclosing the names of people under investigation to a foreign
government. Human rights workers say soldiers who commit atrocities are
sometimes hooded. And most victims are afraid to come forward.

Bonett, the Colombian commander, said he did not disagree with the
conditions of the new aid. The zone where the aid is to be used corresponds
to his prime target: the area where rebels are strongest.

And though the Colombian military has historically enjoyed a record of
impunity before accusations of rights violations, Bonett said he was
committed to establishing a culture of respect for human rights in a
military where, despite many accusations, no one has ever been sentenced
for torture.

But Bonett also said McCaffrey's visit was a sign of growing concern in
Washington about the instability roiling Colombia, quite aside from drug
trafficking.

"The United States has enormous interests and investments here, and there
have been a lot of Americans kidnapped by the guerrillas, and a lot of
companies attacked by them," the commander said. "The U.S. has every right
to defend itself, and the best way to defend itself is through the
Colombian government."

Copyright 1997 The New York Times Company