COLOMBIA TOASTS US-DONATED BLACK HAWKS, DRUG FIGHT

TOLEMAIDA MILITARY BASE, Colombia (Reuters) - Colombian President
Andres Pastrana officially received on Tuesday the last of 16
state-of-the-art Black Hawk helicopters promised by the United States
to aid the Andean nation's anti-cocaine offensive.

Standing in front a $10 million aircraft hanger, also paid for the by
the U.S. government, Pastrana said the ongoing U.S. military aid
would be decisive in the battle to wipe out a drug trade which fueled
Colombia's guerrilla war.

``I want to thank the government of the United States, the U.S.
Congress and the beloved people of this nation for understanding the
message we have sent out to the world,'' Pastrana said from the
Tolemaida military base in central Colombia.

``Colombia cannot (win) alone, but united we can defeat the scourge
of drugs and its harmful consequences.''

Military analysts say Colombia's increasing use of helicopters to
quickly transport troops to hot spots has given it an advantage on
drug traffickers and leftist rebels by radically cutting response
time to arriving intelligence data.

The United States, the world's biggest cocaine consuming nation, is
pouring more than $1 billion in mainly military aid into Pastrana's
Plan Colombia anti-drug program. It is the biggest U.S. military
buildup in Latin America since El Salvador (news - web sites) in the
1980s.

Washington hopes the military aid will cut the more than 580 tons of
cocaine turned out annually by Colombia, the world's largest producer
of the drug, and stem financing for the more than 30,000
Marxist-inspired rebels and outlawed paramilitary fighters in
Colombia's 37-year-old war.

The conflict has claimed more than 40,000 mostly civilian lives in
the past decade.

The U.S. Black Hawk allotments alone are worth $224 million and the
aircraft can be modified to launch rockets and fire mortars and can
be mounted with machine guns.

Including the U.S. donations, Colombia now has a fleet of 29 Black
Hawk helicopters.

Additionally, the United States has already delivered 33 UH-1N troop
transport helicopters under Plan Colombia and has promised 25 Huey-II
helicopters -- which U.S. Ambassador to Colombia Anne Patterson said
on Tuesday would begin arriving later this month.

``Together, these aircraft show an exceptional increase in our
bilateral efforts to intercept the drug trade at its source,''
Patterson said.

She said that since Plan Colombia was launched in January 2001, the
anti-narcotics police eradicated 230,000 acres of coca -- double the
amount destroyed the previous year. Colombian security forces also
dismantled 1,400 cocaine laboratories and seized nearly 54 tons of
the drug.

The United States has earmarked an additional $500 million in aid to
help modernize Colombia's security forces under the so-called Andean
Initiative, which also allots anti-narcotics aid to Colombia's
neighbors, including Peru and Ecuador.