Pubdate: Sun, 27 Dec 1998
Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA)
Contact:  http://www.sjmercury.com/
Copyright: 1998 Mercury Center
Author: Douglas Farah, Washington Post

U.S. BOOSTS AID TO COLOMBIAN MILITARY

WASHINGTON -- Despite the roles of Colombia's military in human rights
abuses and the corruption created by the nation's role as one of world's
leading producers of cocaine, the United States is stepping up its
involvement with the Colombian armed forces because it fears that they are
losing a war to Marxist rebels who derive much of their income from drug
trafficking.

Washington is acting despite concerns about the army's dismal human rights
record as well as longtime drug-related corruption in the highest ranks of
the officer corps.

The U.S. aid package will provide training and partial funding for a
1,000-member army counternarcotics brigade as well as a CIA-sponsored
intelligence center and listening post deep in Colombia's Amazon jungle,
according to U.S. and Colombian officials.

The aid comes on top of training provided to the Colombian military on a
smaller scale by U.S. Special Forces for several years.

The decision to "cautiously re-engage" the Colombian military, in the words
of one senior U.S. official, marks a significant shift in U.S. policy toward
Colombia, which supplies roughly 80 percent of the cocaine and 60 percent of
the heroin sold in the United States.

After working closely with the Colombian military in the late 1980s and
early 1990s, the United States largely cut off direct aid, citing human
rights abuses. While the Special Forces training has continued, the bulk of
U.S. money to fight drug trafficking has been steered to the country's
national police force.

Human rights organizations charge that the United States is rewarding an
army with one of the worst human rights records in Latin America while
risking entanglement in the country's long-running civil war.

But U.S. officials say they have little choice given the growing involvement
in drug trafficking of Colombia's largest rebel group, the Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia.

Of the trickle of aid that the United States has provided to the Colombian
military in recent years, almost all has gone to the air force and navy,
rather than the army, which has been linked to right-wing paramilitary death
squads. The United States has channeled most of its counterdrug assistance
to the National Police, which, under the leadership of Gen. Jose Serrano,
has improved its human rights record and is now considered a 2

premier counternarcotics forces.

In fiscal 1998 the United States gave the police $289 million, up from $180
million the year before, making Colombia one of the largest recipients of
U.S. foreign aid. In contrast, the military received $40 million, of which
$30 million was used to maintain two radar bases to monitor suspicious
flights from Peru and Bolivia.

Under current rules governing U.S. aid to the Colombian military, only two
small army units whose rosters have been screened for human rights abusers
are permitted to use U.S.-supplied equipment -- and they are restricted to
an area known as "the box," which includes prime southern coca-producing
areas.

Under the new plan formulated by U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen and
his Colombian counterpart, Rodrigo Lloreda, during a meeting in Cartagena,
Colombia, earlier this month, the new counternarcotics brigade can operate
throughout the country. The brigade is expected to be ready for action by
mid-1999.

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