Pubdate: Mon, 27 Nov 2000
Source: Associated Press
Copyright: 2000 Associated Press
Author: George Gedda, Associated Press Writer

U.S. FEARS COLOMBIA DRUG OPERATIONS

WASHINGTON  - A top official said Monday the Clinton
administration plans to augment efforts to deal with the possibility
that Colombian drug traffickers will transfer their activities to
neighboring countries as Colombia develops more effective ways to
crack down on the narcotics trade.

The State Department's third ranking official, Thomas Pickering, said
attention to this issue will be a ``centerpiece'' of the
administration's counternarcotics assistance requests next year.

Pickering told a news conference that bipartisan support for the
existing $1.3 billion program, directed mainly at Colombia, ensures
that the counterdrug effort will continue regardless of who is elected.

``The issue of spillover is real,'' said Pickering, who spent two days
in Colombia last week, along with Gen. Barry McCaffrey, head of the
White House narcotics control office.

Pickering said drug operations have spilled into Colombia because
highly effective counterdrug operations in Peru and Bolivia forced
traffickers to relocate. As a result, production in Colombia has
soared, he noted.

The U.S. goal, he said, is to strengthen countries where traffickers
already operate or that may be future targets. Among those are
Venezuela, Brazil and Panama, Pickering said, adding that that the
spillover could jeopardize the sharp reduction in drug trafficking in
Peru and Bolivia.

The United States does not envision a regional anti-drug alliance
among these countries, but rather a series of bilateral assistance
programs aimed at strengthening their counterdrug capabilities,
Pickering said.

The administration lost a key supporter recently when House
International Relations Committee chairman Benjamin Gilman, R-N.Y.,
said officials made a ``major mistake'' in shifting most
counternarcotics assistance for Colombia from the police to the military.

Gilman said the Colombian Army ``is incapable'' of controlling any of
the guerrilla- and coca-infested areas of southern Colombia now or
anytime soon.

Pickering said the Colombian police continue to perform a major role.
But, he said, they cannot carry out their mission without the
additional security protection of the military ``as they go about
destruction of laboratories, manual and aerial spraying eradication of
crops and interdiction of the movement of crops.''

Another critic, Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., plans to fly to Colombia
on Tuesday for an assessment of the administration strategy.

In an interview, Wellstone said he was concerned the administration's
counterdrug strategy in Colombia is becoming a counterinsurgency
policy at the same time, a reference to the powerful leftist guerrilla
movement that has been fighting for decades.

Wellstone said he wonders whether the two ``have become merged,
whether we may be heading into the thick of the war there.''

Rejecting that concern, Picking said U.S. aid is designed to support
only counternarcotics activities.

``We have so much to do in Colombia with the Colombians in that area
that the danger of slopping over into something that's purely
counterinsurgency is minimal for the next several years,'' he said.
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