DATE=8/30/2000
TYPE=U-S OPINION ROUNDUP
TITLE=MR. CLINTON VISITS COLOMBIA
NUMBER=6-11982
BYLINE=ANDREW GUTHRIE
DATELINE=WASHINGTON
EDITOR=ASSIGNMENTS
TELEPHONE=619-3335
INTERNET=YES
CONTENT=
INTRO: Just hours after returning from a brief visit to
Africa, President Bill Clinton jetted off to the Colombian
port city of Cartagena at midweek. The trip, lasting less
than a day, was designed to show support for anti-drug
efforts, and included meetings with embattled Colombian
President Andres Pastrana. Cartagena, on Colombia's
Caribbean north coast, was chosen presumably for security
reasons. It is far from the troubled capital Bogota, and
areas where rebel guerrilla fighting is widespread.
The site for the brief talks provides a metaphor for many
U-S editorial writers who question putting more money and
U-S troops into a country facing two large guerrilla
insurgencies, and overrun by illicit drug production and
violence.
The president's visit has intensified that debate, and we
have some samples now in today's U-S Opinion Roundup.
TEXT: The United States Congress recently passed - -
and President Clinton signed into law - - an
additional aid bill for Colombia. It provides one-
point-three-billion-dollars for 60, U-S- made military
helicopters and other equipment, as well as U-S
military training for Colombia's army to refine it's
drug interdiction skills.
Some papers approve of the growing involvement, while
others are wary. The Sun in Baltimore takes a
relatively balanced view.
VOICE: President Clinton's visit ...
underscores U-S support for President Andres
Pastrana's Plan Colombia. ...[It] calls for
promoting economic recovery, enhancing national
security, making peace and strengthening
institutions of the state and civil society in a
country where a 50-year insurgency grew
remarkably lately, amid economic depression and
mushrooming narco-traffic. ... Outside official
Washington, the [U-S] aid package has come under
criticism, much of it contradictory, for
neglecting the economic side, militarizing the
drug problem, being bound to fail, or bound to
succeed and push the drug problem into Venezuela
and Ecuador. There are also predictions it
could drag U-S forces into a Vietnam-scale
quagmire. ... The leading criticism is that
President Clinton waived the human rights
certification provision of the bill. ... From a
human rights standpoint, the only policy worse
than providing aid would be withholding it.
Plan Colombia may not succeed. It will fail if
not attempted.
TEXT: In Northern California, the San Francisco
Examiner is more skeptical.
VOICE: The U-S aid is financing the training
and equipment of three "anti-narcotics"
battalions of the Colombian army and providing
them with 60 U-S made helicopters to do battle
with the bad guys. ... It's amazing that such
plans, which have never worked before to reduce
significantly the volumes of illegal drugs
available to American buyers, keep arousing the
hopes of their political sponsors in Washington.
TEXT: Turning to New York's Long Island, in an area
where Colombian-originated cocaine use is a problem,
Newsday suggests "[Mr.] Clinton's Colombia
Entanglement May Mean Trouble."
VOICE: /// OPT /// Despite the hoopla [Editors:
"tumultuous publicity; fanfare"] that
accompanied President ... Clinton's farewell
trip to Africa this week, his brief visit to
Colombia ... may well be the most significant -
- and troubling - - of his official stops, the
one carrying unforeseeable consequences for his
successor. /// END OPT /// ... [President]
Clinton is right to support [President]
Pastrana, a decent man trying, however
unsuccessfully, to defend Colombia's democracy
against a ruthless coalition of rebels and drug
lords. But the massive aid package is a
mistake. It could be the thin edge of the wedge
for a potentially much wider U-S involvement in
a bitter civil conflict in which both sides have
connections to Colombia's drug traffickers. ...
And [Mr.] Clinton will have saddled the next U-S
president with a foreign entanglement that is
almost certain not to produce the desired result
of stemming the flow of drugs - - and which
could backfire badly.
TEXT: For it's part, The Washington Post takes note
of the growing criticism in both this country and
Colombia of the aid package. But the Post says the
United States cannot walk away.
VOICE: ... much of what the critics say is
true. ...Colombia suffers from a comprehensive
social and political breakdown, which only the
resolve of its own people, not foreign aid, can
ultimately correct. And yet we cannot agree
with those - - including prominent human rights
groups that have protested the president's
decision to waive human rights conditions on the
aid for this year - - who oppose the
president's Plan Colombia, with its heavy
emphasis on drug crop eradication and a new
military offensive against the guerrillas. ...
Talk of "another Vietnam" in Colombia is
irresponsible hyperbole. Mr. Clinton's plan ...
envisions no introduction of U-S combat forces,
and it includes a substantial amount of money to
shore up the legal system and address other
social and economic ills. ... there is an
irreducible military element to Colombia's
plight; /// OPT/// the country needs to restore
government control over all its territory, and
it needs the capability to put enough heat on
the F-A-R-C [Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia] - - and its sources of drug money -
- so ... the guerrillas have no choice but to
bargain in good faith. Only the United States
is in a position to help Colombia do this. ...
/// END OPT /// The president and Congress are
right to have made this commitment.
TEXT: Back in Northern California, however, The San
Francisco Chronicle is upset that Colombia did not
meet more than one of the seven human rights
conditions imposed by Congress as a condition for the
aid. And in the Midwest, the Chicago Tribune talks of
Colombia's violence and the U-S risk.
VOICE: The bombs and battles that rocked
Colombia Tuesday were meant by leftist
guerrillas as a blunt message for President
Clinton: If he wants a war, some Colombians will
give him one. ... [Mr.] Clinton ... will spend
only five hours in Colombia ... for obvious
security reasons. He won't even visit the
capital, Bogota. It isn't safe with guerrillas
fighting nearby. That speaks volumes about the
risks the Clinton administration is taking by
embarking on a new military strategy aimed at
Colombia's narco-traffickers ...
TEXT: Finally, The New York Times says Colombia's
president Andres Pastrana "deserves American support"
but calls the "expansion of American support to
Colombia's security forces" ... "misguided."
With that comment from the New York Times we end this
round-up of current U-S editorial thinking on the
expanding role of the United States in the anti-
insurgency and anti-drug trafficking in Colombia.
NEB/ANG/PW
30-Aug-2000 12:31 PM EDT (30-Aug-2000 1631 UTC)
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Source: Voice of America
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