U.S. CONGRESS WARMS UP TO MORE MILITARY AID FOR COLOMBIA

WASHINGTON A series of bold attacks by Colombia's leftist guerrillas and a
newly tough response by President Andres Pastrana have begun to shift
long-standing resistance on Capitol Hill to expanded U.S. military
involvement there, encouraging Bush administration officials who believe
Colombia should be included in the administration's counterterrorism efforts.

Since January, forces of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia have
hijacked a domestic airliner, kidnapped leading political figures and
targeted major national electrical and water installations. The police have
charged the group with torturing and killing a Colombian senator, whose
body was found in a ravine outside Bogota. Colombia's 40 years of warfare
have been characterized by spectacular brutality that has left tens of
thousands dead. It is considered the kidnapping capital of the world - in
1999, a separate leftist group burst into Mass at a Medellin church and
marched the congregation into the mountains as hostages.

Rightist paramilitary forces have slain hundreds of innocent rural
villagers for alleged guerrilla complicity. Before the guerrillas and the
paramilitary force took over much of the country's cocaine and heroin
business, drug cartels regularly bombed and slaughtered civilians. But the
timing and scope of the revolutionary group's actions, amid the new
anti-terrorism focus of U.S. foreign policy, have provoked a strong
reaction in Washington. Combined with the guerrillas' unyielding stance
during three years of government peace talks that Pastrana has now ended,
and their increasing dependence on the drug trade, the recent attacks
appear to have ended any claim by the group to political legitimacy and
changed the label applied to them from "insurgents" to "terrorists."

Although the Bush administration has not seen the need to consult Congress
on new anti-terrorism efforts in countries such as Georgia and Yemen,
military aid to Colombia has a long history of legislative consultation.
Congress restricted nearly $2 billion in largely military aid approved for
Colombia over the last two years to stopping the production and export of
narcotics, and imposed tough human rights restrictions on the military.

But even the leading backers of those limits, including Senator Patrick
Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who heads the Appropriations subcommittee that
must approve such funding, have indicated that the counternarcotics policy
should now be reviewed.

Leahy and others are insistent that human rights limits must be preserved,
and that Colombia must spend more of its own money on defense. If Colombia
could "demonstrate it is taking the conditions on aid seriously," said a
knowledgeable Senate aide, nonnarcotics aid would be considered. In a
closed-door briefing by State Department officials last week, sources said
that Representative Jim Kolbe, Republican of Arizona, and Representative
Nita Lowey, Democrat of New York, the chairman and ranking member of the
House Appropriations subcommittee on foreign operations, suggested the
administration was likely to find a receptive audience for proposals to
help Colombia fight domestic terrorism.

"There is just more support now," said a subcommittee aide, noting that
Pastrana is calling the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia terrorists,
after long resistance.

Kolbe, Lowey and others have warned the Bush administration not to look for
loopholes in current legislation that restricts aid "solely for
counternarcotics purpose(s)," or to try to evade human rights restrictions.
Instead, they advised the administration to make a case for new
anti-terrorism authority in light of what many consider a new threat level
in Colombia.

But some in Congress may be moving more quickly. Kolbe and others have
discussed a resolution supporting anti-terrorism aid for Colombia in the
House to push the White House to action. None of the Colombia proposals
call for U.S. ground troops.