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) NNNN Source: Voice of America .