Pubdate: Thu, 19 Oct 2000
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Copyright: 2000 The Washington Post Company
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Author: Scott Wilson, Washington Post Foreign Service

EUROPEANS SCALE BACK COLOMBIAN DRUG AID

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica, Oct. 18 - The European Union plans an aid package for 
Colombia that falls far short of what Colombian officials had expected, 
weakening an anti-drug strategy that has failed to win significant domestic 
or international support beyond the United States.

Assembled here for a conference on the Colombian conflict, European 
diplomats said the $250 million aid package, to be presented in Bogota on 
Tuesday, will not be given directly to the Colombian government. Instead, 
the aid will be channeled mostly to programs run by nonprofit groups 
working for human rights, judicial reform and economic development. In 
addition, its size--only a quarter of the amount Colombia had 
anticipated--will mean less money than expected for government grass-roots 
work considered essential for persuading farmers to turn their backs on the 
drug trade by growing legal crops.

The decision is something of a setback for President Andres Pastrana's 
government, which had built its $7.5 billion anti-drug strategy known as 
Plan Colombia around a $1 billion European commitment. Excluding money the 
Colombian government had already planned to spend on anti-drug programs, 
Plan Colombia now amounts to roughly half the size originally advertised.

Europe's reluctance arises from the plan's $1.3 billion U.S. contribution, 
heavily weighted toward military aid. The plan has been roundly denounced 
here during three days of workshops on human rights, economic development 
and anti-drug strategies, uniting traditional U.S. allies and leftist 
guerrillas on grounds it will exacerbate armed conflict in the Colombian 
countryside.

Underscoring that opposition, European diplomats said they will pointedly 
separate their financial assistance from Plan Colombia, leaving only the 
U.S. and Colombian governments as major donors to what has been 
characterized here as a "war strategy." The concern among the plan's 
supporters is that, without significant European support, the program will 
be vulnerable to domestic criticism that it is another U.S. military 
intervention in Latin America rather than the peace plan Colombian 
officials have sold it as.

"The military aid [in the plan] has been like putting a blue stocking in 
the wash with white clothes--everything comes out blue," said Marianne da 
Costa de Moraes, Austria's ambassador to Colombia. "It will be very 
difficult for [Europe] to say we support Plan Colombia because of the 
psychology involved."

The smaller package reflects a marketing failure on the part of the 
Colombian government that has delayed the start of its anti-drug plan. 
Since taking office in 1998, Pastrana has sought foreign support by 
presenting Colombia's domestic drug industry as an international problem.

What emerged was Plan Colombia, a three-year strategy to eradicate the coca 
and poppy crops that help finance the leftist guerrillas and privately 
funded paramilitary groups whose fighting has terrorized the country's 
drug-producing regions. By depriving the guerrillas of their chief form of 
financing while building schools, roads and health clinics in 
drug-producing areas, Pastrana has said, the government will emerge with a 
stronger hand and public support at the peace table.

The United States agreed to send money for social development programs, 
judicial reform and crop substitution. But the bulk of the package will 
arrive as 57 helicopters to shuttle U.S.-trained anti-drug battalions 
through conflict zones, particularly in the coca-producing heartland of 
southern Colombia.

But unlike the United States, European countries view Colombia as 
experiencing a humanitarian crisis solvable only through social 
development, and they have condemned the military elements of the 
government's strategy. Several European diplomats here said the Colombian 
government neglected to take those differing views into account in seeking 
their help.

"It's the only aid package I know of where the military component was put 
smack in the middle of a development package," said one Scandinavian 
diplomat here. "It contaminated everything in the eyes of Colombian civil 
society and the European community."
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