[EXCERPTS]U.S. Department of State

QUESTION: Bob Novak has a column this morning in which he suggests that the Administration has been dragging its feet in providing Black Hawk helicopters to Colombia. And he also says that the United States has been sitting idly by while guerrillas make significant gains in Colombia. Any comment on either of those?

MR. RUBIN: Yes, let me say that there has been some increase in the intensity of guerrilla warfare, the guerrilla insurgency in Colombia. We also know that some of the guerrilla movements fund their cause through participation in the drug trade.

The United States has a national security interest in Colombia to stop the cultivation. We are working diligently with elements of the Colombian Government. Our policy is to assist in fighting narcotics production and trafficking. Our assistance to the government of Colombia was over $100 million last year - the largest single counter-narcotics program in the world. In the final analysis, the responsibility to deal effectively with narco-trafficking rests squarely with the Colombian Government.

With respect to the issue of Blackhawks, we believe that purchasing and maintaining three Blackhawks is not the best expenditure of taxpayer dollars. They are extremely costly to buy, maintain and operate. We are planning to address the problem of range and mobility at altitude through alternatives, including the upgrading of existing helicopters to Super Hueys. We're working with the government of Colombia on this. They have some Black Hawks in their stock.

With regard to a particular quote in the column you're referring to, I found it demonstrably incorrect, and was stunned and surprised that the columnist didn't make even the most minimal effort to contact those he quoted or those he attributed certain views to. Let me point to a statement by the Drug Czar today, making clear that Barry McCaffrey, the Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, namely the Drug Czar, made clear to Secretary Albright that he supported in great detail the testimony she made to Congress in which she explained his and her view that we would be robbing Peter to pay Paul, and that when you have to stop doing nine things to pay for the tenth thing - the helicopters - the tenth thing you are doing is not going to work because the nine first things are the basis to make that tenth thing work.

So it was an illogical column in that regard, and particularly outrageous that no effort was made to contact the Secretary about this. I can point to a letter from Barry McCaffrey to the Secretary of State commending the Secretary for thoughtful and courageous remarks at her appearance before the House Foreign Relations Committee in resisting efforts by those who want to earmark more than one-fifth of the entire budget for the purchase of three new Sikorsky Blackhawk helicopters. Such a spending plan would effectively end alternative development programs in Peru and Bolivia this year.

So those who are pursuing this project are undermining our battle to fight drugs, because the Blackhawks contribute less to our objective of an overall reduction of coca than we could accomplish by properly supporting programs in the whole coca-producing region. Those are the comments that Director McCaffrey made to Secretary Albright. The columnist's casual and irresponsible claims of what he said about the Secretary of State are therefore not a tribute to your profession.

(The briefing concluded at 1:30 P.M.)