DATE=1/13/2000
TYPE=BACKGROUND REPORT
TITLE=U-S - COLOMBIA AID
NUMBER=5-45238
BYLINE=DAVID GOLLUST
DATELINE=WHITE HOUSE
CONTENT=
VOICED AT:
INTRO: U-S Secretary of State Madeleine Albright
flies to Colombia today (eds: or Friday) to discuss
the Clinton administration's proposed one-point-six
billion dollar aid plan designed to combat the
Colombian narcotics trade and assist the country's
beleaguered democracy. The two-year aid program --
unveiled this week -- has been welcomed by Republican
leaders in Congress but criticized by other members
and human rights advocates, who fear it will draw the
United States farther into Colombia's internal
conflict. V-O-A's David Gollust has this background
report from the White House.
TEXT: The White House plan will mean a four-fold
increase in assistance to Colombia -which is already
the third-largest U-S foreign aid recipient. And the
announcement has focussed new attention on the complex
crisis in Colombia, where the production of illicit
cocaine and heroin has been booming, and leftwing
guerrillas control much of the countryside, including
major coca-growing areas.
The Administration program, which expands on a plan
presented last year by Republican Congressional
leaders, would allocate 600-million dollars this year
for weapons and training for the Colombian armed
forces, including the purchase of more than 60
helicopters, among them advanced "Blackhawk" assault
aircraft.
The enhanced air power would support government
efforts to regain control of the southern region of
the country, where the drug trade has flourished with
at least tacit support from the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia, or FARC, whose guerrillas have
been at war with authorities in Bogota since 1964.
But administration officials stress that the plan also
includes money to support President Andres Pastrana's
efforts to reach peace with the guerrillas, to
eradicate coca fields and promote alternate crops, and
to help Colombia's judicial system deal with human
rights abuses. Clinton spokesman Joe Lockhart insists
it is in essence an anti-drug - and not an anti-
insurgency - initiative:
/// LOCKHART ACTUALITY ///
We believe that President Pastrana is on the
right track as far as promoting peace in the
country and we're committed to helping in that
process, as far as our counter-drug efforts.
This is going after the source problem. This is
going after, with some economic assistance, an
alternative economy strategy. So there's a lot
of parts to this. And I just don't accept the
critique of this that it's somehow a counter-
insurgency program.
/// END ACT ///
Administration anti-drug chief General Barry McCaffrey
says the FARC guerrillas tax the cocaine industry at
all levels of production and that two-thirds of the
rebel units are directly involved in drug-related
criminal activity.
William Perry, a Latin America specialist at
Washington's Center for Strategic and International
Studies, agrees that the distinction between the
traffickers and guerrillas has become blurred. An
adviser to past Republican administrations, Mr. Perry
says U-S provided military equipment will inevitably
be used against the guerrillas, and that the Clinton
White House should not be overly concerned:
/// PERRY ACTUALITY ///
We're dealing with a country of 40-million
people and an insurgency of 15 to 20 thousand
who really don't have much political support.
It probably wouldn't get five per cent (of the
vote) in a legitimate election. It's largely a
criminal enterprise. And the problem is that the
Colombian security forces have lacked the
leadership and logistics and equipment to make
headway against these people in the
topographical environment of Colombia, which is
a very difficult one. And I think the United
States can be a big help - if the Colombians are
serious about this - by providing not U-S
intervention of troops, certainly, but training
and equipment to make up for some of the
deficiencies.
/// END ACT ///
But some Congressional Democrats fear the United
States may become bogged down in a Vietnam-style
quagmire in Colombia, while human rights advocates
link Colombian military leaders with a history of
rights abuses committed by both regular forces and
army-backed rightist paramilitaries.
Robin Kirk -- who heads the Americas division of Human
Rights Watch - says the administration should stop
"fooling itself" into believing that the Colombian
crisis is either simple, or primarily drug-related:
/// KIRK ACTUALITY ///
The problem with the United States position
right now is that it continues to see Colombia
exclusively through the frame of the drug war,
when in fact the problem in Colombia is broader
and much thornier. What we would like to see is
the United States taking the issues of democracy
and human rights much more seriously in
designing an aid plan to Colombia. There's a lot
that the United States can do to build democracy
in Colombia and protect human rights. And the
first thing it has to do, we believe, is to make
it crystal clear to the Colombian military that
the United States will not tolerate human rights
abuses, whether they're committed by the
military itself, or by their proxies in the
paramilitary groups that are wreaking havoc in
Colombia.
/// END ACT ///
Secretary of State Albright says the Administration
intends to insure that none of the aid being committed
to Colombia will go to military units implicated in
abuses, and that U-S concerns about human rights and
the paramilitary groups will figure in her talks in
Bogota.
President Pastrana is expected to visit Washington
within a few weeks to meet congressional leaders on
the aid plan, and to seek broader support for his
recovery program from international lending
institutions. (Signed)
NEB/DAG/gm
13-Jan-2000 17:03 PM EDT (13-Jan-2000 2203 UTC)
NNNN
Source: Voice of America
.
