MIRED IN COLOMBIA

With less than five hours left before a threatened offensive by
government armed forces, Colombia's largest guerrilla group agreed
Monday to return to negotiations to end the 40-year-old civil war.

That's good news--talking is almost always preferable to fighting,
even if in Colombia's case, cynics for now have the upper hand. The
latest round of negotiations have been plodding along since President
Andres Pastrana took office in 1998 and have yielded little despite
sizable concessions by the government, including turning over a huge
chunk of the country to the rebels.

Even less promising than negotiations, though, is the United States'
growing military involvement in the Colombian narco-guerrilla
quagmire. The Clinton administration poured $1.3 billion into the Plan
Colombia military aid package, followed by the Bush administration's
$625 million Regional Andean Initiative.

Both strategies claimed to target narcotraffickers--not guerrillas--
even though for the most part they are indistinguishable. According to
a report Tuesday in the Washington Post, now the Bush administration
is considering abandoning that pretense and using U.S. military aid to
fight guerrillas directly, under the umbrella of its worldwide
campaign against terrorism.

Such a shift in American policy would be folly. It would detract
attention and resources from the legitimate campaign elsewhere against
terrorist groups that directly threaten American life and property,
while exacerbating the violence that is ripping apart Colombia.
Neither policy would advance American interests.

Direct American involvement in the Colombian civil war was supposedly
prompted by our wanting to stanch the production of cocaine and other
illegal drugs. But our efforts have been like sprinkling water on an
oil fire--they have only spread the flames of narcotrafficking to
other parts of Colombia and to neighboring countries such as Ecuador.
The nearly $2 billion the U.S. has invested in Colombia during the
past three years could have been much more profitably invested at home
in drug treatment and education programs to reduce narcotics
consumption.

Aside from the drug issue, Colombia's bloodshed is an internal affair
that can be settled only by the participants. So far the Colombian
government has failed to confront the paramilitary armies that are
responsible for much of both the human rights atrocities and the
narcotics trade in the country--presumably because they are allies in
the war against the guerrillas. In fact, as the deadline for
negotiations neared Monday evening, paramilitary armies were readying
to invade guerrilla-controlled areas and inflict their usual regimen
of terror on any suspected civilian sympathizers.

American aid to the Colombian government has done little to quell
either narcotrafficking or the civil war. Ratcheting up that same
policy, as reportedly contemplated by the Bush administration, won't
yield different results. U.S. interests would be better served instead
by pressuring the Pastrana government to bring the rogue
paramilitaries under control, as a prelude to negotiations with the
guerrillas.

Although cynics are right--a negotiated peace in Colombia is going to
be a long and tedious process--it still offers the best hope of ending
a conflict that neither side has been able to win on the battlefield
after 40 years of fighting.