NEW RULES FOR COLOMBIA

Imagine a narcotics agent whose sole mission is to stop drug dealers. If
the agent does anything else, he oversteps his legal authority. When the
agent learns that a suspect plans to kill a police officer, he's not
allowed to inform the target or do anything to prevent the hit because his
mission is narcotics, not murder.

That sounds crazy, and it is. It also describes, without much exaggeration,
the U.S. position in Colombia's civil war.

Colombia supplies most of this country's cocaine and a large part of its
illegal heroin. By law, U.S. aid to Colombia -- about $1 billion in the
past year -- can be used to fight drug dealers but not to defeat rebels
attempting to overthrow the elected government of Andres Pastrana. Because
the drug dealers and rebels often are the same, the distinction is
impossible to make. American aid, equipment and advisers might contribute
to surveillance flights that spot drug activity, for example, but they
couldn't help to spy on rebel troops preparing to strike military targets.

Congress imposed the restrictions -- to which Presidents Clinton and Bush
had agreed -- as a brake on American involvement in the four- decade-old
civil war. The impulse for restraint is understandable, even if the rules
are not.

The Sept. 11 attacks forced policy-makers to think more deeply about
Colombia. The Bush administration lists three military groups in that
country as terrorist organizations. If America is "at war" against
terrorists, why hamstring Colombia's army in its fight against them any
more than we would hamstring the Northern Alliance fighting Al- Qaeda?

The Colombian army's ties to one of the terror groups, guilty like the
others of massacring civilians, is one complication. Another is Colombia's
recent drift toward all-out war. A last-minute effort this week saved peace
talks. Another deadline for the largest rebel group -- the FARC -- to agree
to cease-fire terms expires Sunday. Then, or soon, Colombia's army could
assault a vast rebel enclave. U.S. officials have to be ready, when the
time comes, to direct the use of American aid and the involvement of the
several hundred advisers in the country.

Vague and impractical rules of engagement invite abuse and mistakes.
President Bush could ask Congress for new rules. Is it possible to enact
flexible rules that put U.S. aid to more effective use but do not ensnare
Americans in a foreign civil war? No one has explained how yet, but the
Bush administration should try.