COLOMBIA LEADER TO SEEK ANTI-REBEL AID ON U.S. VISIT

BOGOTA, Colombia - (Reuters) - Colombian President Andres Pastrana will
travel to Washington on April 17-19 to raise Colombia's profile in the
expanding U.S. war on terrorism by winning aid to fight leftist rebels,
officials said on Wednesday.

The outgoing Colombian leader, who steps down on Aug. 7, with meet with
President Bush on April 18 and plans to visit Congress as lawmakers
consider funds for Bogota under a larger $27 billion emergency package for
the war on terrorism. "The visit comes at a critical time," said Arturo
Valenzuela, a National Security Advisor on Latin America under the Clinton
administration.

"The policy (toward Colombia) is being re-evaluated, and the administration
is asking Congress for more direct support for the counter-insurgency," he
added.

The Bush administration proposal includes $25 million to beef up Colombia's
anti-kidnapping police units, $4 million to support police posts in areas
out of government control and $6 million to start training troops to
protect an oil pipeline.

U.S. Green Beret soldiers would be sent to train Colombian forces, who
frequently clash with rebels fighting in the country's 38-year-old war
guerrilla war. Bush has asked for an additional $98 million in next year's
budget for the program.

The funding is part of a key U.S. policy shift, as the Bush administration
also presses Congress to lift restrictions that currently limit U.S.
military aid to the war on drugs in Colombia, the world's largest producer
of cocaine.

The United States has already poured $1 billion into the Plan Colombia
anti-drug offensive, in the biggest U.S. military build-up in Latin America
since El Salvador in the 1980s.

Washington brands rebels and paramilitary fighters "terrorists" and has
increasingly linked the insurgent forces to the cocaine trade. Last month a
federal grand jury for the first time indicted three members of Colombia's
largest leftist insurgency, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or
FARC, on drug-trafficking charges.

Washington acknowledges that Plan Colombia has so far failed to curb the
sowing of coca leaf -- the main ingredient in cocaine -- or raise the
drug's prices on American streets.

But Bush and many U.S. lawmakers, arguing for more military support, say
that stabilizing the violence-torn Andean nation must come first to
successfully battle the cocaine trade.

"In defense of our children who are dying because of drugs, we need to do
everything we can to stop the growth of the drug trade," Rep. Cass
Ballenger, a North Carolina Republican, told reporters during a visit
Wednesday to Bogota.

Also key to the U.S. strategy to fight drugs -- and high on Pastrana's
agenda -- is renewing a Andean trade pact that scraps import taxes on many
goods to boost the legal economy.

On a March visit to Colombia, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick
said he expected Congress this month to renew the trade accord -- which
expired last year -- retroactively.