Pubdate: Mon, 23 Aug 1999 Source: Seattle Times (WA) Copyright: 1999 The Seattle Times Company Contact: http://www.seattletimes.com/ Author: Douglas Farah, The Washington Post Related: http://www.mapinc.org/latin.htm U.S. READY TO STEP UP COLOMBIA'S DRUG WAR WASHINGTON - The Clinton administration is preparing to greatly step up military and economic aid to Colombia in response to fears of the growing strength of drug-financed Marxist guerrillas. In separate visits to Colombia, senior U.S. officials warned President Andres Pastrana last week that he risks losing U.S. support if he makes further concessions to the insurgents in an effort to restart stalled peace negotiations, according to sources familiar with the talks. But the officials, White House drug czar Barry McCaffrey and Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering, also told Pastrana the United States will sharply increase aid if he develops a comprehensive plan to strengthen the military, halt the nation's economic free fall and fight drug trafficking. Part of the economic aid will be $3 billion in International Monetary Fund loans, with some additional direct U.S. military aid. Pickering, briefing reporters here, said he asked Pastrana to present his plan by the middle of September. Colombian defense officials last month requested $500 million in additional military aid over the next two years, a number U.S. officials said is being discussed. U.S. security assistance already stands at $289 million this year, making Colombia the third-largest recipient of such U.S. aid after Israel and Egypt. "We are working toward a much-larger engagement with the United States, involving combating narcotics, strengthening our battlefield capabilities and economic issues," said a senior Colombian Foreign Ministry official. "It is a much-broader engagement than just the narcotics issue, because all our problems are linked." The decision to escalate aid comes a year after the United States resumed helping the army and expanded intelligence sharing, ending a period covering most of this decade during which collaboration was cut off because of the army's abysmal human-rights record. Currently the United States is training a 950-man Colombian army counternarcotics battalion, the first such specialized unit in the military, whose primary objective will be to regain control of guerrilla-controlled territory. Pentagon and State Department officials said they recently agreed to provide the group with 18 Huey UH-1N helicopters. And, according to the same sources, the United States is planning on funding at least two more such battalions, a move that would boost U.S. aid by tens of millions of dollars. Pickering said he was "sobered but certainly not panicked" by his trip and stressed that the guerrillas are not on the verge of military victory. But other officials were less optimistic. "Colombia is a disaster, and I don't see any way around that," said McCaffrey, a retired general who recently proposed spending an additional $1 billion in the Andean drug-producing region, with about half of the money going to Colombia. "We are in a period of intense debate in the administration and on the Hill . . . but we don't have the latitude to let a fellow democracy go under." McCaffrey said his proposal, including money for alternative development and judicial reform along with military aid, was an attempt to tackle Colombia's multiple problems. "So far the debate has been at a micro level, about 10 helicopters here or training a battalion there," McCaffrey said. "We are not talking about the right order of magnitude for this problem." Colombia produces 80 percent of the world's cocaine and about 70 percent of the heroin found in the United States. Two Marxist guerrilla groups - the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, with about 15,000 combatants, and the National Liberation Army, with about 5,000 combatants - control about 40 percent of the national territory and receive hundreds of millions of dollars a year from protecting drug-trafficking routes, airstrips and laboratories. In addition, some 7,000 right-wing paramilitary troops, who also derive millions of dollars from cocaine trafficking, control about 15 percent of the national territory. - --- MAP posted-by: Thunder