CAUTION FOR COLOMBIA

U.S. Should Be Careful About Requests For Military Aid

Colombian President-elect Alvaro Uribe Velez used his visit to Washington
last week to push hard for more U.S. military assistance to his country in
its nearly four-decades-long struggle with rebel forces. He deserved a
sympathetic ear but should not get an open wallet.

The reasons are several. The Colombian government's own commitment to
ending the conflict is not convincing, and the argument that uprooting the
rebel movements in Colombia will end or even reduce Colombian narcotics
exports to the United States doesn't hold water. We urge continued U.S.
restraint toward Mr. Uribe's pleas that America become more deeply involved.

The new Colombian president was elected in May on a platform that promised
a more muscular approach to the country's rebel movements than that taken
by his predecessor, Andres Pastrana. The outgoing president spent three
years in negotiations with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia,
known as FARC, and this produced some periods of relative quiet in the
country but no resolution of the conflict. Colombia has received some $2
billion in aid from the United States in recent years, mostly in the form
of military equipment and training. It is the third largest U.S. aid
recipient, after Israel and Egypt.

Mr. Uribe asked President Bush to push Congress to agree to more. Some
elements in Congress are skeptical. It would be a difficult stretch to
consider the Colombian government's war with its rebels to be part of the
global war on terrorism; it is fundamentally a local affair.

The Colombian government's own commitment to winning the war is not
overwhelming. U.S. military strategists consider its army of 35,000 to be
too small to do the job. At the same time, young Colombians who are
college-bound -- in other words, the children of the Colombian elite -- are
exempt from the draft. The number of U.S. troops currently stationed in
Colombia is capped at 400. That sounds about right to us.

One project for which Mr. Uribe is requesting assistance is to provide
military protection to an Occidental Petroleum pipeline in Colombia. A U.S.
government study has judged that Colombia is not training enough pilots for
the helicopters and other aircraft the United States has already given the
Colombian forces. And $2 million appears to have been embezzled. The
Colombian military and government are considered to be too closely
associated with a right-wing, human rights-violating militia in the country.

Finally, the basis of the $2 billion aid program in the first place -- the
idea that getting rid of the rebels would somehow reduce if not eliminate
illegal Colombian narcotics exports to the United States -- turns out to be
false when put to the test. A recent study indicates that narcotics
production and exports are not related in practice to movements in the
civil war.

The right American position toward the Colombian conflict is continuing
interest, but no increase in U.S. involvement, in spite of the lures of
talk about the war on terrorism, the war on drugs, protecting petroleum
pipelines or whatever other combination makes the military aid lottery pay
off in Washington at this time.