Pubdate: Tue, 29 Aug 2000 Source: Associated Press Copyright: 2000 Associated Press Author: JAVIER BAENA, Associated Press Writer COLOMBIA TO PRESS CLINTON ON TRADE CARTAGENA, Colombia (AP) - Colombia plans to press President Clinton during a visit this week for trade benefits to complement a $1.3 billion U.S. aid package to help fight drug trafficking, the country's foreign minister said. ``More than aid, which of course we need, we also need better trade terms,'' Foreign Minister Guillermo Fernandez said in an interview with The Associated Press, outlining his government's plan to press for lower U.S. tariffs on imports of Colombian clothing and textiles. Colombia argues that such trade benefits will indirectly help curb drug production in the world's leading cocaine-exporting nation by providing legal jobs for people currently involved in the drug trade. A program allowing Colombia and its Andean neighbors to export flowers duty-free to the United States has created tens of thousands of jobs, while angering U.S. flower growers. Much of the talk during Clinton's visit Wednesday will be about a planned Colombian military offensive into drug-producing regions dominated by leftist rebels. A $1.3 billion U.S. aid package provides U.S. military training for Colombian army troops who will try to gain control of the coca fields and then eradicate crops and destroy drug laboratories. Clinton is also expected to ask President Andres Pastrana to take steps to reduce human rights abuses, including massacres committed by right-wing paramilitary groups with alleged ties to the military. In the interview Friday, Fernandez also stressed the importance of U.S. aid for so-called ``alternative development'' projects to help poor peasants switch from growing coca and opium poppies to legal crops. Only about a tenth of the money in the U.S. aid plan is destined for social programs. Neighboring countries, especially Ecuador and Peru, have expressed concern that the planned military strike into southern Colombia will send rebels and refugees fleeing across their borders. However, Fernandez said the anti-narcotics push will be accompanied by ``the largest social investments Colombia has ever made in these areas to avoid that phenomenon.'' He said 70 percent of the government's expenditures to fight drug trafficking and restore economic growth will be spent on social investments. The foreign minister also downplayed any environmental damage to the Amazon basin from herbicides used to eradicate illegal drug crops. ``What is producing the real ecological damage is the alliance between drug trafficking and the guerrillas,'' Fernandez said. - --- MAP posted-by: Don Beck