Pubdate: Mon, 27 Nov 2000
Source: Wall Street Journal (US)
Copyright: 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Contact:  200 Liberty Street, New York, NY 10281
Fax: (212) 416-2658
Website: http://www.wsj.com/

US AWARE OF POSSIBLE COLOMBIA DRUG PROJECT SPILLOVER

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A top U.S. official said Monday the Clinton 
administration plans to augment efforts to deal with the possibility that 
Colombian drug traffickers will transfer their activities to neighboring 
countries as Colombia develops more effective ways to crack down on the 
narcotics trade.

The State Department's third ranking official, Thomas Pickering, said 
attention to this issue will be a "centerpiece" of the administration's 
counternarcotics assistance requests next year.

Pickering told a news conference that bipartisan support for the existing 
$1.3 billion program, directed mainly at Colombia, ensures that the 
counterdrug effort will continue regardless of who is elected.

"The issue of spillover is real," said Pickering, who spent two days in 
Colombia last week, along with Gen. Barry McCaffrey, head of the White 
House narcotics control office.

Pickering said drug operations have spilled into Colombia because highly 
effective counterdrug operations in Peru and Bolivia forced traffickers to 
relocate. As a result, production in Colombia has soared, he noted.

The U.S. goal, he said, is to strengthen countries where traffickers 
already operate or that may be future targets. Among those are Venezuela, 
Brazil and Panama, Pickering said, adding that that the spillover could 
jeopardize the sharp reduction in drug trafficking in Peru and Bolivia.

The U.S. doesn't envision a regional anti-drug alliance among these 
countries, but rather a series of bilateral assistance programs aimed at 
strengthening their counterdrug capabilities, Pickering said.

The administration lost a key supporter recently when House International 
Relations Committee chairman Benjamin Gilman, R-N.Y., said officials made a 
"major mistake" in shifting most counternarcotics assistance for Colombia 
from the police to the military.

Gilman said the Colombian Army "is incapable" of controlling any of the 
guerrilla- and coca-infested areas of southern Colombia now or anytime soon.

Pickering said the Colombian police continue to perform a major role. But, 
he said, they can't carry out their mission without the additional security 
protection of the military "as they go about destruction of laboratories, 
manual and aerial spraying eradication of crops and interdiction of the 
movement of crops."

Another critic, Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., plans to fly to Colombia on 
Tuesday for an assessment of the administration strategy.

In an interview, Wellstone said he was concerned the administration's 
counterdrug strategy in Colombia is becoming a counterinsurgency policy at 
the same time, a reference to the powerful leftist guerrilla movement that 
has been fighting for decades.

Wellstone said he wonders whether the two "have become merged, whether we 
may be heading into the thick of the war there."

Rejecting that concern, Picking said U.S. aid is designed to support only 
counternarcotics activities.

"We have so much to do in Colombia with the Colombians in that area that 
the danger of slopping over into something that's purely counterinsurgency 
is minimal for the next several years," he said.
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