BUSH SEEKS MORE AID FOR WAR IN COLOMBIA

Millions Would Help Protect Oil For U.S.

BOGOTA, Colombia -- A top-level Bush administration delegation announced
plans Tuesday to widen U.S. involvement in Colombia's civil war. Under the
plan, the United States would provide training, weapons and aircraft to
Colombian troops to protect a pipeline carrying U.S. oil.

"We are committed to help Colombians create a Colombia that is a peaceful,
prosperous, drug-free and terror-free democracy," said Undersecretary of
State for Political Affairs Marc Grossman.

He said the Bush administration would ask Congress for $98 million to
strengthen a Colombian army brigade to guard the 490-mile Cano Limon
pipeline, whose oil field is operated by U.S. firm Occidental Petroleum Corp.

The aid comes on top of already massive U.S. assistance intended to wipe
out cocaine and heroin production in the Andean nation.

The Bush administration sent Congress a fiscal year 2003 budget Monday that
included money for training a second antidrug brigade as part of a
14-percent increase in anti-narcotics spending in the Andean region. Of the
$731 million proposed for the regional effort, $439 million was for Colombia.

Wary of getting dragged into a conflict that has claimed 40,000 lives in
the past decade, the United States has not granted President Andres
Pastrana's request for authorization to use U.S. anti-narcotics aid against
guerrillas and far-right paramilitaries in nondrug operations.

The 120,000-barrel-a-day Cano Limon pipeline, which is currently not in
operation due to repairs, was bombed 170 times last year and has been
bombed at least 13 times this year.

It is targeted by both the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by
the Spanish initials FARC, and the smaller National Liberation Army, or
ELN, as part of extortion campaigns. The United States calls the two rebel
groups terrorist organizations.

Meanwhile in Washington on Tuesday, three human rights groups charged that
Pastrana's government has failed to meet human rights conditions for
continued U.S. military aid.

Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the Washington Office on
Latin America accused Colombian forces of extensive collaboration with an
illegal right-wing paramilitary group that has been killing suspected rebel
collaborators.