Pubdate: Sat, 16 Mar 2002
Source: Houston Chronicle (TX)
Webpage: www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/world/1298227
Copyright: 2002 Houston Chronicle Publishing Company Division, Hearst Newspaper
Contact:  http://www.chron.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/198
Author: John Otis

COLOMBIA SEEKS PUBLIC BACKING IN WAR

Average Citizens Asked To Sacrifice As Nation Tries To Expand Military

BOGOTA, Colombia -- As the Bush administration prepares to get deeply 
involved in this nation's fight against Marxist guerrillas, Bogota's 
officials are coming up with their own plans to boost military spending and 
persuade average Colombians to sacrifice for the war effort.

With the collapse of peace talks last month and an onslaught of rebel 
attacks, kidnappings and sabotage, a new sense of urgency has arisen in 
both Washington and Bogota over the need to upgrade Colombia's armed 
forces, which are considered too small to adequately defend the nation.

Next week, the Bush administration will ask Congress to lift long-standing 
restrictions on U.S. military aid to the Andean country. If lawmakers sign 
on, American trainers and equipment could be deployed not just for 
Colombian government antidrug missions but for counterinsurgency operations 
as well.

"We are determined to seek new and more explicit legal authorities for 
State and Department of Defense assistance ... to support the Colombian 
government's unified campaign against narcotics trafficking and terrorist 
activities," Scott McClellan, a White House spokesman, told reporters 
aboard Air Force One on Friday.

Even so, Colombians must do more to help themselves, according to Luis 
Moreno, Bogota's ambassador to the United States.

"Colombians can't demand assistance in exchange for nothing," Moreno said 
in an interview in Dinero, a Bogota business magazine. "The country has to 
increase military spending and everyone --- rich and poor alike -- must 
join the army to fight the war."

President Andres Pastrana has increased defense spending and carried out a 
far-reaching program of military reforms. But it hasn't been enough to 
definitively turn the tide in the war.

The nation remains bogged down in a many-sided conflict involving two 
guerrilla groups, rightwing paramilitary organizations and drug 
traffickers. Many experts believe that the 120,000-member armed forces will 
have to double in size to defend the nation from the estimated 30,000 
guerrillas and paramilitaries.

"Colombia is a huge nation with a very small army," said Alfredo Rangel, a 
military analyst and an adviser to the Colombian Defense Ministry. Ideally, 
he added, government forces should strive for a 10-to-1 advantage over the 
enemy in troop strength.

For now, that's impossible because Colombia spends just 1.9 percent of its 
gross domestic product on national defense. That figure puts Colombia 
behind several Latin American countries that are at peace, including 
Argentina, Brazil and Mexico.

By contrast, Israel spends 8.7 percent of its GDP on defense.

Pastrana was elected in 1998 on a peace platform. But three years of 
off-and-on negotiations with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, 
the nation's largest rebel group known as the FARC, broke down on Feb. 20.

Since then, the Pastrana government has been scrambling to come up with new 
funds for the military. It has considered everything from raising 
taxes  and cutting social spending to more radical measures like declaring 
an economic emergency, which would allow it to bypass the Congress and push 
through economic measures by decree.

But Pastrana appears to have little wiggle room since he is also striving 
to meet economic targets under its agreement with International Monetary 
Fund. His government has made $860 million in cuts in non-military spending 
since the peace talks ended.

On Thursday, Treasury Minister Juan Manuel Santos suggested that some 
Colombian workers and companies could donate one day's salary or profits to 
a special defense fund.

"It would be good for all of us to assume a commitment to the nation's 
defense," said Sen. German Vargas Lleras, when asked about scheme. "All 
Colombians must contribute their grain of sand."

Yet the proposal, which Santos claims would bring in some $350 million, has 
already stirred controversy and exposed the difficulties of trying to build 
a nationwide coalition to win the war. Labor leaders, for example, said 
upper-class Colombians should pay for the war and provide troops for the army.

"We will not give one peso for the war, or one son or one brother to 
support an insensible war that is destroying the country," said Julio 
Roberto Gomez, president of the General Confederation of Workers.

By contrast, a growing number of U.S. officials suddenly seem willing to 
expand American involvement in the Colombian war.

The Bogota government has received nearly $2 billion in American aid in 
recent years. But most of the money was channeled into counternarcotics 
operations due to concerns that the United States could get sucked into a 
Vietnam-like quagmire.

But the breakdown of the peace talks and growing concerns about terrorism 
following the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States appear to have shifted 
the balance. Now, many U.S. officials and legislators appear to favor a 
more aggressive approach that would allow American assistance to be used 
against the FARC, which is listed by the State Department as a terrorist 
organization.

"Terrorism is a threat to the democratic institutions of Colombia," said 
McClellan, the Bush administration spokesman.
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