A DRUG-WAR DILEMMA

Charlie Rangel (D-Harlem) faces a crucial choice: As chairman of the
House Ways and Means Committee, will he do what's needed to keep drugs
off the streets? He's a key man in ratifying the free-trade agreement
between the United States and Colombia - and that accord will have
real consequences on 125th Street and across America.

With the help of the Drug Enforcement Administration, Colombia has
been making sensational progress in the war on drugs. We visited
Medellin, Colombia, earlier this month and found no vestiges of the
once-dominant Medellin cartel.

The city used to see kidnappings every day. Now - with the cartel's
leaders dead, in prison or hiding in the jungle - there have been none
for three years.

Under President Alvaro Uribe, Colombia has used $2 billion-plus a year
in military aid - granted by the Clinton and Bush administrations - to
extradite top drug lords to the United States, imprison 30 death-squad
leaders and disarm 30,000 paramilitary militia that protected the drug
gangs. The leftist guerillas of FARC have been driven back into
remote, unpopulated areas and dare not surface outside their jungle
hideouts.

But if Colombia is no longer to export cocaine, it has to be able to
sell flowers, textiles, sugar, bananas and other harmless fare to its
U.S. customers without tariff or quota barriers.

Along with deals covering Panama and Peru, the U.S.-Colombia
free-trade accord is set to come to the floor of Congress in the next
few months. Enter Rangel, whose committee has jurisdiction.

At the insistence of the AFL-CIO, Rangel has demanded that the treaty
include a requirement that labor unions be allowed to organize and
flourish in those Latin American nations. Uribe has no objection to
the proposed language - the Bush administration does. Its lawyers warn
that the provision could be used by Colombia, Panama or Peru to sue
the United States to force repeal of state right-to-work laws or other
obstacles to unionization in this country.

The Bushies suspect that the U.S. labor movement is trying to insert
the language into the treaties as a back-door way of opening the doors
wider to unionization here.

Whether these worries are valid is beside the point. The
administration's position leaves Rangel with a clear choice: Do the
bidding of the AFL-CIO - or pass the treaty as-is and reduce the flow
of drugs to his district. While the Bush administration is committed
to fighting drugs, too, its concern is a bit more theoretical than
that of the congressman from Harlem.

If Rangel helps to kill the free-trade treaty because of a battle
between Big Labor and the president, he'll undermine and undercut
Colombia's successful war on drugs. The troops in Colombia who risk
their lives daily to smash labs, defoliate cocoa plants and arrest
drug lords will find themselves swimming against the economic tide.

If America does not reward Colombia by making its non-cocaine exports
profitable, it will leave the poor of that South American ally no
choice but to go back to the drug labs.

Let the administration and the unions fight over Panama or Peru - or,
better yet, resolve their differences in a straightforward legislative
battle without holding a Third World country hostage. The free-trade
agreement with Colombia is of vital importance to all those who take
the war on drugs seriously - most of all, one would think, Charlie
Rangel.