IN LATIN AMERICA, BUSH WILL FOCUS ON POVERTY, DRUGS AND TERRORISM

WASHINGTON -- President Bush will highlight two lesser-known targets of the
war on terrorism when he travels to Latin America this weekend: poverty and
drug lords.

Starting Thursday in Monterrey, Mexico, Mr. Bush will tout his plan to
boost U.S. foreign aid, partly as a way to dissuade nations from harboring
terrorists. At the United Nations International Conference on Financing for
Development, he will call for what amounts to a competition among
developing nations for U.S. aid; winners will be picked based on their
ability to adopt economic reforms and to end corruption.

See full coverage of the Aftermath of Terror.

"In countries where there are not good policies, and where there is
hopelessness, and where there is poverty, you can create conditions of the
kind that you had in Afghanistan, where these parasites can latch on,"
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday.

Still, many world leaders have criticized Mr. Bush's plan as inadequately
funded and needlessly restrictive.

Mr. Bush had hoped to bring with him to Mexico a new law granting amnesty
to hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants working in the U.S. But
Senate Democrats are blocking the legislation.

In Lima, Peru, the second stop on his three-nation trip, Mr. Bush will talk
about how the war against terrorism must include efforts to crack down on
the booming drug trade in the Andean region. Mr. Bush, who will become the
first sitting U.S. president to visit Peru, will argue that countries
equipped to fight the drug trade will be better prepared to go after
terrorists. This fits into Mr. Bush's broader plan of targeting specific
groups that help fund or protect terrorists, aides said.

Mr. Bush plans to ask Congress on Thursday to lift restrictions on U.S.
funding for Colombia's military, aides said. That would free up
U.S.-trained forces to go after the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia, which the administration labels a terrorist organization. "We
expect [Colombia] to fight all renegade and terrorist groups," Mr. Bush
said. "We have no interest in committing ground troops, but we do want to
help them, and we'll do so."

Peru has experienced a resurgence of terrorist activity by groups involved
in the drug trade.

Mr. Bush, however, won't call for resuming the program that allowed Andean
nations to shoot down suspected narcotics-smuggling planes that refuse
repeated orders to land. The program, which Andean leaders want restored,
was halted last year after a Peruvian fighter mistakenly shot down a small
plane carrying U.S. missionaries, killing a mother and her child.

The heads of four Andean Community nations -- Peru, Colombia, Ecuador and
Bolivia -- also are chagrined that Mr. Bush won't be bringing with him an
expanded Andean Trade Preferences Act. The trade bill, first passed in
1991, reduces or eliminates import duties to help South American
drug-producing countries boost employment in legal industrial goods and
industrial commodities. The U.S. law was temporarily renewed for 90 days in
February.

Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott (R., Miss.) will try to force a vote
Thursday on legislation expanding trade with Andean nations.