COLOMBIA'S WORRY: LOOSER US TIES

Officials Visiting This Week Press for Continued Funding of an
Antidrug Strategy and Passage of a Free-Trade Agreement.

Washington - Colombian officials are mounting a full-court diplomatic
press in the United States this week as they seek to stave off a fall
from the high-flying status their country achieved in Washington as a
favored ally of the Bush administration.

Colombia was promoted as a Latin success story by President Bush but
denigrated by human rights advocates and some members of Congress as
a failed state. Now, it's likely to find itself far from center stage
in a Washington grappling with the economic crisis and still finding
its foreign-policy footing.

But at the same time, the senior Colombian officials here this week
may find comfort in the hints of a more pragmatic foreign policy
under President Obama - one that may not hold up a neighbor like
Colombia as an example but won't dismiss it as a pariah, either.

"Before, you had President Bush touting Colombia as some kind of new
Sweden, even as people in the human rights community and some in
Congress said it was a South American Somalia - when of course
Colombia is neither but is something different," says Michael
Shifter, director of the Andean program at the Inter-American
Dialogue in Washington. "Once he gets around to thinking about
Colombia, I think President Obama will be more realistic about the
situation there, and the Colombians will appreciate that."

Continued funding of the antidrug partnership called Plan Colombia is
the goal of Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos, who was
meeting with officials, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates,
beginning Tuesday. The strategy has cost Washington nearly $6 billion
over the past nine years, though with little impact on the flow of
Colombian cocaine into the US, critics say.

Another priority Colombia has long sought is passage of a free-trade
agreement that the Bush White House negotiated with the Colombian
government of President Alvaro Uribe. Colombia's vice president,
Francisco Santos, is crisscrossing the US to boost the trade pact's
flagging fortunes.

Also this week, Colombia's foreign minister, Jaime Bermudez, meets in
Washington with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and members
of Congress.

More than just the economic downturn makes this a difficult time for
Colombia to be making its case to US officials. The country is
reeling from charges last week that state security agents also on the
payroll of Colombia's drug lords were using illegal wiretaps to spy
on politicians, judges, and journalists. A top counterintelligence
official in the state security agency has already resigned over the scandal.

The latest accusations are likely to only feed perceptions that
Colombia's security and intelligence institutions are deeply
intertwined with the mafias that keep Colombia the world's No. 1
cocaine supplier. (Past scandals suggest that security and
intelligence institutions also have links to the paramilitary
organizations fighting a drug-financed insurgency.)

Beyond the recent scandal are indications - backed by solid and
devastating reports - that Colombia is losing the war on coca-leaf
cultivation and cocaine production and export, despite the billions
of dollars in US military and alternative-development assistance.

In November, a report from the US Government Accountability Office
(GAO) concluded that Plan Colombia's goal of cutting the production
and distribution of illegal narcotics in half over six years "was not
fully achieved" based on its finding that, in fact, coca-leaf
production had increased by 15 percent between 2000 and 2006.

The report - commissioned by then-Sen. and now Vice President Joe
Biden - did cite improved security in Colombia that has resulted in a
significant drop in the number of kidnappings and murders.

The GAO recommended cuts in US funding, to be offset by broader
Colombian responsibility for its own programs.

Colombian officials are responding to the negative publicity with a
mix of economic optimism and warnings about the consequences of cuts
in counternarcotics assistance.

In wire-service interviews before leaving Colombia for Washington,
Defense Minister Santos equated any cut in what is now about $500
million in annual aid to "pulling the rug out" from under Colombia
just as it is "winning" its decades-old fight with a drug-financed
guerrilla. At the same time, he said, any cut would have a direct
impact in the US.

"A reduction means more cocaine ends up on the streets of US cities," he said.

Colombian officials are caught between the consequences of claiming
too much progress and the need to demonstrate that the country's
human rights situation in particular has improved, says Mr. Shifter
of the Inter-American Dialogue. "It's a tricky case to make, because
they have to show progress," he says. "But if you claim too much
progress, the question becomes, 'Why do you need such significant
assistance?' "