WIDER U.S. ROLE IN COLOMBIA SOUGHT

$98 Million Requested For Military Training, Equipment.

The Bush administration's fiscal 2003 budget request for $98 million
in new Pentagon training and equipment for the Colombian military
marks the first step in a wider initiative to move U.S. involvement in
the war-racked South American nation beyond counternarcotics
assistance, administration officials said yesterday.

The money, over and above a request for $731 million in Andean
regional assistance to continue anti-drug aid programs, would be drawn
from foreign military financing funds, most often used to provide U.S.
military aid to allies in the Middle East. Since Sept. 11, additional
money from the account has been authorized for anti-terrorism
activities in Uzbekistan, Turkey and the Philippines.

In Colombia, most of the money would be used to train troops and
provide at least 12 new transport helicopters for a 2,000- to
4,000-member "Critical Infrastructure Brigade" in the Colombian army.
The brigade's initial role would be to protect a pipeline that
transports oil belonging to Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum
Corp. from fields in northeastern Colombia to the Caribbean coast.
Bombing by leftist guerrilla groups shut down the 480-mile pipeline
for most of last year.

Eventually, a senior Defense Department official said, the brigade
would extend its protection to other infrastructure, including power
transmission sites that are regularly targeted by guerrillas of the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by its Spanish initials
FARC, and the smaller National Liberation Army (ELN).

The official said the program would begin a "qualitative change" from
a policy based on beefing up Colombia's ability to counter the
guerrilla-protected production and trafficking of cocaine and heroin
in the southern part of the country, to one that will help the
Colombian government develop "effective sovereignty" over all of its
territory.

The request drew instant congressional criticism. Sen. Patrick J.
Leahy (D-Vt.), whose foreign operations subcommittee appropriates
counterdrug and foreign military financing funds and has placed tight
limits on all aid to Colombia, said, "This is no longer about stopping
drugs -- it's about fighting the guerrillas." Citing ongoing human
rights abuses by the Colombian military, Leahy said the proposal
"draws us further into a military quagmire, and the Congress should be
very reluctant to go down that road."

On the other side of the issue, Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) said he was
"encouraged" by the proposal. He asked Secretary of State Colin L.
Powell, testifying yesterday before the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, "How else can we increase help to the Colombian government
in their war against the narco-terrorists?" Powell said it is
important to protect the Colombian economy, but "our principal focus"
remains on the larger Andean regional counternarcotics effort.

Although final figures are still being compiled, preliminary
indications are that the cultivation of coca, the raw material of
cocaine, has not decreased despite a massive U.S.-funded aerial
fumigation program. Alternative development programs designed to wean
peasant growers from illicit crops have progressed more slowly than
anticipated. Troops trained and equipped by the United States have
made little headway in attempts to reclaim guerrilla-occupied
coca-growing zones in the south.

Other proposals -- including the stepped-up provision of U.S.
intelligence in the anti-guerrilla war -- are being debated by the
State Department, which is reluctant to risk bipartisan support for
the anti-drug policy, and the Pentagon, where civilian policymakers
believe the new anti-terrorism climate will support an expanded
effort. Colombia's guerrilla and paramilitary groups are on the
administration's list of international terrorist organizations.

Attempts to gain congressional approval for the program are likely to
be undermined by a report released yesterday by three human rights
groups -- Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the Washington
Office on Latin America. The report accuses the Colombian military of
maintaining close operational ties with paramilitary forces
responsible for widespread civilian massacres.

Current congressional restrictions on counternarcotics funding require
that Powell suspend all U.S. aid at the end of the month unless he can
certify that Colombia has made progress in severing those ties and in
promoting the civilian investigation, suspension and prosecution of
military officers credibly accused of human rights abuses. The report
concludes that "Colombia's government has not, to date, satisfied
these conditions," and that the military's human rights record, if
anything, has gotten worse.