Pubdate: Mon, 18 Dec 2000
Source: Miami Herald (FL)
Copyright: 2000 The Miami Herald
Contact:  One Herald Plaza, Miami FL 33132-1693
Fax: (305) 376-8950
Website: http://www.herald.com/
Forum: http://krwebx.infi.net/webxmulti/cgi-bin/WebX?mherald
Author: Juan O. Tamayo

DRUG AID TO COLOMBIA LOSING KEY SUPPORTERS

President-elect George W. Bush will have to maneuver carefully to preserve 
the fragile political consensus in support of massive U.S. government aid 
to Colombia to fight the cocaine and heroin industries, analysts say.

The new administration will come into office just after two key figures in 
pushing the $1.3 billion aid package through Congress have retired: drug 
czar Barry McCaffrey, a forceful former army general, and Undersecretary of 
State Thomas Pickering, a respected career diplomat.

"This is going to be an orphan policy, because McCaffrey and Pickering will 
be gone and Bush will not want to become involved," said Michael Shifter, 
senior fellow at the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think tank.

Furthermore, Bush's own experience in Latin America is limited to dealing 
with Mexico, and Colin Powell, the retired U.S. chief of staff who will 
probably become secretary of state, has a history of opposing U.S. 
involvement in guerrilla wars.

Any misstep by Bush could shatter congressional support to replenish the 
existing $1.3 billion aid package once it expires. The assistance was 
approved only this summer, but even some supporters have already expressed 
second thoughts.

Congressional liberals want less aid to the Colombian military, less use of 
weed killers on coca and opium poppy fields aid, and tougher human rights 
conditions.

Hard-liners want greater overall spending and fewer restrictions on using 
the funds to fight Colombia's 20,000 leftist guerrillas.

Without help from the United States, they warn, the nation of 41 million 
could collapse into chaos.

The $1.3 billion package, mostly in military aid, was crafted by the 
Clinton administration to finance a Colombian assault on traffickers who 
produce 90 percent of the cocaine and 65 percent of the heroin reaching 
U.S. streets.

No money is supposed to be used to fight guerrillas, a distinction that 
constitutes one of the most critical points of contention.

During the campaign, Bush limited his own comments on the issue to a 
general endorsement of the aid package. But one of his foreign policy 
advisors, Robert Zoellick, told the Council on Foreign Relations Oct. 30 
that the ban on using the U.S. funds to fight guerrillas amounted to a 
"false distinction between counter-insurgency and counter-narcotics efforts."

"Narco-traffickers and guerrillas compose one dangerous network," Zoellick 
said. If the Colombian government is willing to fight both, he added, "the 
U.S. should offer serious, sustained and timely financial, material and 
intelligence support."

Most U.S. analysts of Colombia affairs predicted Bush would try to stay 
away from the policy debate as much as he could, too weak from his disputed 
electoral victory to push for significant changes in an already 
controversial policy.

"Bush will discover that it's important to maintain a bipartisan policy 
toward Colombia," said former State Department Latin America chief Bernard 
Aronson.

Bush would also be more than happy to allow a Clinton-era policy to stand 
or fall on its own merits, rather than throw his own administration into 
the policy debate, other analysts said.

"Colombia is not going to be a key issue for Bush because there's already a 
Clinton plan he can blame if it fails," said Wayne Smith, a retired U.S. 
diplomat at the Center for International Policy in Washington.

The first signs of the Bush administration's approach on Colombia are 
expected this spring, when Congress begins considering some $500 million in 
follow-on aid to the anti-narcotic side of the broad nation-building 
strategy known as Plan Colombia .

Conservative Republicans have already said they will push to increase the 
aid and allow more operations against guerrillas growing stronger by the 
day with the $500 million a year they collect in protection payoffs from 
drug traffickers.

House International Relations Committee Chairman Rep. Benjamin Gilman, 
R-N.Y., one of the strongest supporters of aid to Colombia, announced last 
month that he would push to redirect much of the aid to the National 
Police, allotted only $120 million out of the $1.3 billion even though they 
have the primary responsibility for narcotics interdiction.

"We believe that once Bush has the opportunity to review the situation 
there will be an attitude toward increasing the aid and redirecting some of 
it to more productive areas," one GOP congressional aide said.

Defense contractors who would profit from the stepped up spending are also 
expected to lobby for a bigger aid package, and any guerrilla gains in the 
battlefield could step up pressures for increased U.S. involvement.

"I expect the policy will continue in the current direction, but would not 
be surprised if there is a more explicit effort to assist on the 
counter-insurgency side," said Cynthia Arnson, assistant director of the 
Latin America program at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson Center.

But Bush will face an uphill battle if he tries to change the course of policy.

Any Bush break with a bipartisan approach risks upsetting liberal Democrats 
who put aside their reservations and supported the $1.3 billion package 
only because a Democrat in the White House asked them, Aronson said.

"He risks recreating the divisions we saw in El Salvador," he added, 
recalling the feuds between President Reagan and a Democratic-controlled 
Congress that plagued U.S. assistance to that war-ravaged nation in the 1980s.

"It would not take a lot to cause a reassessment of this approach. Support 
for it is broad, but quite thin," said Tim Rieser, an aide to Sen. Patrick 
Leahy, D-Vt., ranking Democrat in the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee.
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MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart