Pubdate: Sun, 10 Dec 2000 Source: Plain Dealer, The (OH) Copyright: 2000 The Plain Dealer Contact: 1801 Superior Ave., Cleveland, OH 44114 Website: http://www.cleveland.com/news/ Forum: http://forums.cleveland.com/index.html Author: Jared Kotler, Associated Press U.S.-TRAINED BATTALION GETS READY FOR BIG DRUG BATTLE LARANDIA ARMY BASE, Colombia - Helicopters thunder past a reviewing stand and out over a river snaking through the world's cocaine heartland. Rows of grim-faced troops trained by U.S. Green Berets snap to attention. Martial music plays, diplomas are presented, and a Roman Catholic priest sprinkles holy water on the soldiers, the vanguard of a U.S-backed military push to wipe out cocaine. Graduation day in the war on drugs. The soldiers honored Friday at this sprawling army base in Colombia's rolling southern plains - a 620-man battalion prepared by U.S. special forces troops based at Fort Bragg, N.C. - have their work cut out for them. Under the offensive backed by a $1.3 billion U.S. aid package, the battalion will venture out any day now into jungles and Amazonian tributaries teeming with heavily armed guerrillas. Major operations are expected to get under way by January at the latest. The 15,000-strong Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, is deeply involved in the cocaine trade, yielding the rebels mounds of cash - and making them a key target for U.S. and Colombian efforts to stamp out the narcotics industry. The elite, U.S.-trained battalions, coordinating with police and prosecutors, aim to seize and destroy coca fields and laboratories, arrest suspects who give themselves up, and attack anyone who fights back, whether they are insurgents or common criminals. "The bottom line is this," said the commander of U.S. military operations in Latin America, Gen. Peter Pace, who attended the ceremony at Larandia, about 235 miles southwest of Bogota. "If that person, male or female, is trafficking in drugs, regardless of what ideology they have, they are drug traffickers." The battalion christened Friday is the second of three Colombian army units to be prepared and ferried into battle on dozens of U.S.-donated combat helicopters. A third battalion should be ready by the middle of next year, completing training of nearly 3,000 troops and service personnel under President Andres Pastrana's so-called Plan Colombia. The specialized army battalions involve the Colombian military as never before in counter-drug operations. The U.S. training program brings the American military into a close partnership with Colombian forces long accused of human rights abuses against civilians in fighting the rebels. But officials are promising a clean operation, and no direct U.S. troop involvement in the fighting. In addition to general soldiering skills such as marksmanship, Green Beret trainers said they are teaching the troops police-style tactics such as handcuffing suspects and bagging evidence that could be used in trials. Human rights instruction and "target discrimination" are also being emphasized, to prevent unarmed civilians from getting killed in raids on drug laboratories or coca fields. In Putumayo province, the first state to be targeted in the offensive, tens of thousands of farmers and coca harvesters live among the rebels, drug traffickers and right-wing paramilitary units try ing to muscle in on the =46ARC's drug profits. "We've learned that within the drug labs you'll have family members, you'll have wives, you'll have children, you'll have livestock," the senior American instructor at Larandia said, speaking to reporters on condition of anonymity. - ---