HILL STANCE ON COLOMBIA AID SHIFTS

Bush Officials Seek More Funds for Counterterrorism There

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, or
FARC, have hijacked a domestic airliner, kidnapped leading political
figures and targeted major national electrical and water installations.
Police have charged the FARC with torturing and killing a Colombian senator
whose body was found yesterday 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.

Right-wing paramilitary forces, sometimes in tacit alliance with the
Colombian military, 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 FARC actions, amid the new anti-terrorism
focus of U.S. foreign policy, has provoked a strong reaction in Washington.
Combined with the guerrillas' unyielding stance during three years of
government peace talks Pastrana has now ended, and their increasing
dependence on the drug trade, the recent attacks appear to have ended any
FARC claim 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 including 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 Sen. Patrick J.
Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the appropriations subcommittee that must
approve such funding, have indicated that the counter-narcotics 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, non-narcotics aid would be considered.

In a closed-door briefing by State Department officials last week, sources
said that Reps. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.) and Nita M. Lowey (D-N.Y.), the
chairman and ranking member of the House foreign operations appropriations
subcommittee, 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 FARC 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
counter-narcotics 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.

Colombia and administration proponents of expanded aid have urged
congressional supporters to be more public in their views, with the aim of
convincing national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of
State Colin L. Powell that it is time to move.

In a Cabinet-level White House meeting last week, Rice and Powell cited
possible congressional resistance in opposing a Pentagon plan to make
Colombia part of the administration's war against global terrorism, and to
issue a new presidential directive citing terrorism rather than narcotics
as the justification for aid. They agreed that any major policy change was
unadvisable before Colombia's presidential election in May.

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.

The administration will have an early opportunity to respond in a request
for new anti-terrorism funding it expects to send to Congress March 18. The
original proposal considered by the White House last week included as much
as $100 million in supplemental assistance for Colombia. Among the proposed
items were combat upgrades for Colombia's 12 Black Hawk helicopters.

None of the Colombia proposals call for U.S. ground troops. Instead,
Colombia and the Pentagon have joined in asking that counter-narcotics
restrictions be lifted on existing U.S. aid, and that new training,
equipment and intelligence be provided for the war against the guerrillas.