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 .