Pubdate: Fri, 11 Aug 2000
Source: Boston Globe (MA)
Copyright: 2000 Globe Newspaper Company.
Contact:  P.O. Box 2378, Boston, MA 02107-2378
Feedback: http://extranet.globe.com/LettersEditor/default.asp
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Author: Will Weissert, Associated Press

ANTI-NARCOTICS PLANS REVIEWED BY COLOMBIAN HEAD, US OFFICIALS

CARTAGENA, Colombia - President Andres Pastrana met with two top Clinton 
administration officials yesterday to coordinate Washington's $1.3 billion 
anti-narcotics initiative.

The meeting with Barry McCaffrey, director of the White House National Drug 
Control Policy Office, and US Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering came 
the same day that Pastrana approved the extradition of an accused drug 
trafficker to the United States.

McCaffrey and Pickering told a press conference after their session with 
Pastrana that much work remained to be done in determining where some of 
the funds should go.

Under the new aid package, the United States will train Colombian 
anti-narcotic army troops and provide them with combat helicopters to seize 
cocaine- and heroin-producing plantations from leftist rebels and 
right-wing paramilitary groups, which have a lucrative protection rackets 
going.

But the package, approved by Congress and signed by President Clinton last 
month, also includes more than $400 million for nonmilitary projects such 
as alternative crop development, McCaffrey pointed out.

The delegation returned to the United States yesterday afternoon.

The trip helped lay the groundwork for Clinton's Aug. 30 visit to Colombia. 
It will be the first Colombian visit by a US president since George Bush's 
in 1990.

Yesterday's meeting comes less than a week after 83 US Special Forces 
personnel began training Colombian soldiers at a base in Colombia's 
Amazonian jungle.

Also yesterday, Pastrana signed an order for accused drug trafficker 
Alberto Orlandez Gamboa to be extradited to the United States to stand trial.

Colombia's Supreme Court this week had cleared the way for the extradition 
of Gamboa, identified by US officials as one of Colombia's most ruthless 
drug traffickers.

Meanwhile, Colombia's most-feared death squad leader has alleged that US 
anti-narcotics agents sought to enlist his outlaw paramilitary gang to 
combat drug traffickers, Reuters reported.

In a television interview late Wednesday, Carlos Castano, leader of the 
ultra-right paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, said the 
US Drug Enforcement Administration sent him a message asking him to force 
Colombian drug traffickers to surrender to US justice.

The plan, he said, was also a way of eroding the economic mainstay of 
powerful Marxist rebel factions, whom US and Colombian authorities accuse 
of funding a long-running uprising from the booming cocaine and heroin trade.

In Washington yesterday, the DEA declined to comment on the allegations.

"The DEA ... sent me a message and through that there was a possibility of 
ending narco-trafficking in Colombia," Castano said Wednesday, speaking 
with RCN television in his stronghold in northern Cordoba province.

"I received a call saying the DEA was opening the doors so that Colombian 
drug traffickers could surrender to US justice and ... it needed a 
significant force in Colombia that would induce these people to take that 
decision," added the ultra-right warlord.

Sectors of the US administration have called on President Andres Pastrana 
to crack down on Castano's paramilitary group, who allegedly enjoy backing 
from the military in their "dirty war" against suspected leftist 
sympathizers. In practice, however, little has been done.

Despite Castano's claim Wednesday that he was an "enemy of drugs," 
Colombian and US officials have accused him of funding his 
counterinsurgency crusade with drug money.

Castano's comments, however, renewed suspicion that US agencies have been 
carrying out secret operations behind the back of the Colombian government 
and the US Congress.

"When the United States is escalating military involvement in Colombia, 
there are serious concerns about the nature of the US engagement and fears 
about covert operations and escalating paramilitary activity," said 
Winifred Tate, Colombia specialist at the non-governmental Washington 
Office on Latin America.
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