Pubdate: Fri, 22 Sep 2000 Source: Dallas Morning News (TX) Copyright: 2000 The Dallas Morning News Contact: P.O. Box 655237, Dallas, Texas 75265 Fax: (972) 263-0456 Feedback: http://dmnweb.dallasnews.com/letters/ Website: http://www.dallasnews.com/ Forum: http://forums.dallasnews.com:81/webx BUDGET MAY DELAY HELICOPTERS FOR COLOMBIA WASHINGTON -(AP)- Colombia may have to wait until at least 2002 for delivery of the Black Hawk helicopters that are a key part of a $1.3 billion U.S. anti-drug aid package, Clinton administration officials said Thursday. The officials also told lawmakers that the administration is not certain it will have enough money to buy all 18 helicopters included in the plan. Republican critics of the administration's handling of Colombian aid said the delays would set back drug-fighting efforts in Colombia, the source of an estimated 90 percent of the cocaine in the United States and much of the heroin. "This is a war that's going to be lost if we wait two or three years," said Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind. The Defense Department's "conservative" estimates are that the first helicopters would be delivered in October 2002 and all by May 2003, Rand Beers, the State Department's top counterdrug official, told members of the International Relations Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs. Mr. Beers and Brian Sheridan, assistant defense secretary for special operations, agreed that the delays were unacceptable and said they were working to speed up the purchases. They also said they still hoped all 18 Black Hawks could be acquired. Scott Seligman, a spokesman for the Black Hawks' manufacturer, Sikorsky Aircraft Corp., said the company could deliver all 18 helicopters for $234 million - the amount budgeted by Congress - by October 2001. - --- MAP posted-by: Doc-Hawk