Pubdate: Sun, 25 Jun 2000 Source: San Luis Obispo County Tribune (CA) Copyright: 2000 The Tribune Contact: P.O. Box 112, San Luis Obispo, CA 93406-0112 Fax: 805.781.7905 Website: http://www.thetribunenews.com/ Author: Jared Kotler, Associated Press U.S. ANTIDRUG MONEY COULD FIGHT REBELS Distinction Can Be Unclear In Colombia Bogota, Colombia - Lobbying skeptical lawmakers for a huge aid package for Colombia, U.S. officials repeated it until they were blue in the face: The money, they insisted, is for fighting drugs, not rebel insurgents. But on the ground in Colombia, where the proposed aid would finance an unprecedented military push into jungles flush with rebels and cocaine, that distinction is not so sharply drawn. Military officials here see U.S. helicopters and trainers as a way to battle drugs while simultaneously depriving leftist guerrillas and rival paramilitary militias of the cash cow that finances their violence. "They'll keep growing unless we act, gaining more resources to buy arms and recruit people," Colombian Defense Minister Luis Ramirez said in an interview. Destroying the coca crops they tax and protect, Ramirez added, "will indirectly solve the problem of paramilitary groups and the guerrillas by taking away their principal source of financing." The U.S. Congress agreed this week on the outlines of the outlines of the $1.3 billion aid package for this South American country that produces 90 percent of the world's cocaine and a growing amount of its heroin. While some details need to be finalized, Washington appears firmly committed to providing dozens of helicopters and Green Beret trainers for two new 1,000-strong army units that will try to retake Colombia's coca-growing south. Once remote areas are "secured," police planes will fumigate the cocaine-producing plants from the air while civilians officials implement projects to help poor peasants grow alternative crops or to resettle them elsewhere in Colombia. The country's largest guerrilla band, the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, sees the aid package as a thinly veiled counterinsurgency effort. Critics believe it will only inflame a 36-year conflict and undermine fragile peace talks. Operations will center in Putumayo, the state on Ecuador's border that produces two-fifths of the country's coca. A U.S.-trained counternarccotics unit is already stationed at a base there - and surrounded by an estimated 10,000 rebel and parmilitary fighters. Ramirez downplayed the risk of major fighting as the troops hit the jungles. "I don't expect to find huge armies of guerrillas and paramilitaries, but a well-armed group of five people who can do a lot of damage to a fumigation airplane," he said. - --- MAP posted-by: Jo-D