Pubdate: Thu, 24 Aug 2000 Source: Reuters Copyright: 2000 Reuters Limited. Author: Steve Holland U.S. SAYS SEES NO 'VIETNAMIZATION' OF COLOMBIA WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States insisted on Thursday its plan to send U.S. military advisers to Colombia does not represent a deeper, Vietnam-style involvement in the country's drug war. As President Clinton prepared to travel to Colombia next Wednesday, his national security adviser, Sandy Berger, defended the U.S. plan to help Colombia battle drug trafficking. Under a U.S. aid package worth $1.3 billion, a few hundred U.S. military advisers will go to Colombia to train special battalions in fighting the drug trade, and indirectly, the leftist guerrillas who protect and profit from the trafficking. Asked if this represented the "Vietnamization" of Colombia, Berger disagreed. American involvement in Vietnam began with the dispatch of military advisers and ended with the deaths of around 50,000 U.S. troops. "I think you can get paralyzed by the foreign policy of analogy," Berger said. "You should learn from what happened before. But the fact is this is nothing similar whatsoever. We're talking about a few hundred American people going to train some Colombian army battalions." The training is to allow the battalions to provide security for the Colombian national police to go into the areas where the drug problem is most pervasive and destroy crops and laboratories. "We don't think there is a military solution to the guerrilla war in Colombia nor does President (Andres) Pastrana. That is why he has embarked upon such a vigorous peace initiative," Berger said. Other Latin American countries are watching the U.S. plan with great interest, some with concern and others with cautious enthusiasm at the prospect of removing an unstable situation in the region. Clinton is due to meet the Colombian president in the Caribbean coast resort of Cartagena on Aug. 30. It will be the first trip to Colombia by a U.S. president in a decade. Berger said it was critical to provide the assistance to Colombia because the country's democracy could be at stake. "There is risk in Colombia every day -- 35,000 people have been killed in Colombia in the last 10 years. This is a very tough place," he said. "We can either help Colombia try to come to grips with that, help Colombia in its effort to deal with that problem, or stand back and let Colombian democracy collapse," Berger said. - --- MAP posted-by: Jo-D