DATE=2/14/2000 TYPE=U-S OPINION ROUNDUP TITLE=U-S AID FOR COLOMBIA NUMBER=6-11681 BYLINE=ANDREW GUTHRIE DATELINE=WASHINGTON EDITOR=ASSIGNMENTS TELEPHONE=619-3335 CONTENT= INTRO: President Clinton is arguing for a one-billion- six-hundred-million dollar total aid package for Colombia to help that troubled Latin American nation battle drug traffickers and a pair of major guerilla groups. Supporters say the aid would help strengthen the Colombian army with the goal of reducing the production of illicit drugs that find their way into the United States. Opponents shudder at the prospect of deepening involvement in Colombia's more than 30-year-long civil war, likening it to the painful U-S involvement in Vietnam that ended in disaster. And in the daily press, there is plenty of thought on the subject, as we hear from _______ in today's U-S Opinion Roundup. TEXT: Colombia already gets substantial aid from this country, and there is a small cadre of military advisers there helping the army cope with the insurgency. President Clinton's proposal would send many more helicopters to Bogota, and additional U-S military personnel to retrain the anti-narcotic squads of the Colombian Army. Colombia is the world's largest producer of cocaine, most of which ends up in the United States, in one form or another. A large amount of heroin entering the United States also either comes from Colombia, or travels through it on its way to America. Just as members of Congress in both parties are either in favor or against the additional aid, both opinions can also be found in the daily press. We begin our sampling in Texas, where the Houston Chronicle supports the emergency aid package. VOICE: Congress should support President Clinton's request for a one-point-six billion dollar aid package for Colombia, to be used in fighting the drug lords and also in taming the rebel forces there. ... Colombia is ... a nation torn apart by narco-terrorism, communist guerrillas and right-wing death squads. But Colombian President Andres Pastrana has good reason to believe that the communist guerrillas have grown tired of the long war they have been fighting ... and now may be willing to lay down their arms and become part of Colombia's democracy as a political party. President Pastrana so far has avoided any taint of corruption and has earned the confidence of President Clinton. ... Nevertheless, in approving the emergency aid, Congress should make it clear that U-S forces must avoid getting dragged into a civil war in Colombia. TEXT: That was the opinion of the Houston Chronicle. Taking the opposite view and recalling the ghost of the unsuccessful campaign in Vietnam, is The St. Petersburg [Florida] Times, which argues against the aid. It titles the editorial: "It's not our war." VOICE: Anyone wondering where the next black hole for our military resources will open up should look south. The Clinton administration's anti-drug aid plan for Colombia has the potential for absorbing a large chunk of our military budget and, if we're not careful, sucking the United States into a guerrilla war that parallels Vietnam. Even some of our military leaders are expressing concerns about what we may be getting into. ... There are alternatives to what the Clinton administration is proposing. Officials at the D-E-A [Drug Enforcement Administration] suggest that training Colombia's special anti- drug police teams, as opposed to its military, would be more effective and less costly. Other U-S officials say pressing Colombia to make internal changes, including reforming the judiciary, could make a difference. Of course, the real answer to combating the flow of Colombian cocaine is for the United States to refocus its drug war on prevention and treatment. TEXT: On New York's Long Island, Newsday also feels the idea of more aid is - in its words -- a "losing proposition." VOICE: Not only is it unlikely to prove effective in interdicting drugs, but it may embroil the United States in a vicious civil war where it's hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys. And it would turn tiny Colombia into the third biggest recipient of U-S military aid, just behind Israel and Egypt. TEXT: Although the Washington Post has severe reservations, and worries that Colombia could become, in its words, "an Andean Vietnam," the paper supports the aid as the lesser of two evils. VOICE: We agree that the anti-drug rationale is a distinction without a difference - - but we support aid for Colombia nevertheless. Indeed, we wonder why preventing an unpopular and thuggish army with a long record of kidnapping and assassination ... should necessarily be a more suspect objective than breaking up one of the drug cartels' protection forces. As always, such an effort must be weighed not only against the undeniable costs of plunging in but also against the potential costs of doing nothing. ... The best reason for the aid, however, is that it will help in the search for a negotiated settlement to the war, which is the strategic objective of both President Pastrana and President Clinton. TEXT: In Southern California, The [Santa Anna] Orange County Register recalls the earlier days of the Cold War in Central and South America, and calls the idea of more aid to Colombia now, the "U-S's dopey policy." VOICE: Although today's U-S support is given in the name of the Drug War rather than the Cold War, many of the dynamics are strikingly similar to earlier days. Leftists are taking hostages, running drugs, assassinating opponents and engaging in altogether brutal tactics. And, also like the old days, the government is accused of violating human rights and allowing right-wing paramilitaries to carry on a dirty war against the insurgents. ...Still, the end of the Cold War shouldn't lull Americans to sleep as our nation becomes more deeply enmeshed in Colombian hostilities. As Ivan Eland, a foreign policy expert at the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington, told us, U-S efforts in Colombia can lead us too deeply into the conflict. `There's always a danger of it becoming another Vietnam.' TEXT: The California paper concludes by suggesting more effort be made to wean Americans off drugs, as the most effective way of reducing the problems in the jungles of Colombia. On that note, we conclude this sampling of comment on the current proposal to boost U-S aid to Colombia to help combat illegal narcotics production linked to a guerrilla insurgency. NEB/ANG/gm 14-Feb-2000 15:33 PM EDT (14-Feb-2000 2033 UTC) NNNN Source: Voice of America .