U.S. MILITARY BOOSTS FIREPOWER IN COLOMBIAN DRUG WAR

TRES ESQUINAS MILITARY BASE, Colombia - Protruding above the jungle
like a giant white golf ball on a tee, Washington's latest investment
in the war on drugs scans the horizon for small planes ferrying
cocaine over the Amazon.

The $13 million radar station was just inaugurated by President
Andres Pastrana and the U.S. ambassador to Colombia and even given a
blessing by a Roman Catholic priest. While skepticism about the drug
war grows among some critics, so does this jungle outpost where the
campaign is anchored.

Tres Esquinas sprawls alongside a roiling brown river in southern
Colombia within striking distance of drug labs and plantations that
are guarded and taxed by leftist rebels and right-wing paramilitaries.

Built in the 1930s, the base was long a sleepy outpost to defend
Colombia from attack by Peru. Now, its runways are paved and
expanded, long enough to handle jet fighters and Hercules transport
planes.

A large dock is being completed for U.S.-donated patrol boats that
prowl the rivers that are the highways for rebels and drug smugglers
in this roadless region. Banks of computers watched by U.S. and
Colombian intelligence officers compile data from satellites and
reconnaissance planes.

During Thursday's inauguration ceremonies, U.S. and Colombian
officials gave an upbeat assessment of the war on drugs. They also
witnessed the kind of firepower Washington is providing under a $1.3
billion aid package approved last year.

Patrol boats bristling with machine guns and grenade launchers zipped
in formations along the muddy Orteguaza River, blasting away at the
jungle on the opposite bank. Helicopters and warplanes shredded the
jungle with bombs, rockets and machine guns while soldiers lobbed
mortar rounds from gun pits.

The added firepower and U.S. Green Beret training of Colombian troops
is providing security for raids on drug labs and aerial fumigation
runs over illegal plots of coca, the plant used to make cocaine.

For some, the drug war is a dud.

Human-rights activists fear the U.S. support will embolden the
military to abuse people's rights, or lead to direct U.S.-troop
involvement in this South American country's 37-year-old civil war.

Environmentalists worry about safety risks from the herbicides
blasting coca fields.

Still other critics say the world's drug supply won't ever be reduced
until demand for narcotics is curtailed in consumer nations like the
United States.

With American lawmakers echoing those concerns, the U.S. Congress
appears ready to slash about $100 million from the Bush
administration's $731 million follow-up request to last year's aid
plan.

At Tres Esquinas, Brig. Gen. Mario Montoya, the commander of
Colombia's southern forces, brushes aside the criticism.

"We are winning this war," he said, rattling off statistics he said
showed progress, including the destruction of hundreds of thousands
of acres of coca and the combat deaths at the hands of the
U.S.-trained troops of 166 "drug traffickers."

U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson insisted progress is "accelerating,"
and she said the U.S.-trained troops "have not had a single
human-rights complaint against them."