Pubdate: Sun, 25 Jun 2000 Source: New York Times (NY) Copyright: 2000 The New York Times Company Contact: 229 West 43rd Street, New York, NY 10036 Fax: (212) 556-3622 Website: http://www.nytimes.com/ Forum: http://www10.nytimes.com/comment/ Author: Larry Rohter TROUBLES BUILD AS COLOMBIANS AWAIT NEW AID BOGOTA, Colombia, - The United States is committing more than $1 billion to Colombia's struggle against drug production and trafficking just as the government here is stumbling politically and the national police chief who did most to win American trust in his country's efforts has stepped down. The American aid package, likely to total $1.3 billion after the Senate approved it on Wednesday, foresees reduced reliance on the 115,000-member National Police and places greater emphasis on the armed forces. But the retiring police chief, Gen. Rosso Jose Serrano, and his men would never have been called upon to lead the counternarcotics fight had Washington not harbored grave doubts about the fighting ability and human rights record of the Colombian armed forces. And President Andres Pastrana, approaching the midpoint of his four-year term, is increasingly criticized and has lost key aides, including his interior minister, chief of staff and chief negotiator with the armed rebels who have taken over drug production here. Public patience with the president's failure to make a deal with leftist guerrillas who have been battling the government for decades is wearing thin. General Serrano, 58, was praised by his supporters on Capitol Hill as "the best cop in the world." He stepped down on Friday, having announced this month that he was retiring because "I have been to so many police officers' funerals that I can't bear another." Some 2,000 police officers have been killed since 1994 in this country, which has a murder rate about 10 times higher than that of the United States and, with more than 3,000 abductions in 1999, the highest kidnapping rate in the world. Many people here are convinced that the drug war is being waged at the expense of their own security. "The aggravation of drug trafficking and the armed conflict have translated into the police directing their priorities to the defense of the state and its institutions," said Alvaro Camacho, director of the Institute of Political Studies at the National University. As a result, he said, the police's "role of supporting the citizenry has been debilitated" and they "have become an actor in the war, separated from the civilian population." Perhaps because of such sentiments, Colombia's defense minister, Luis Fernando Ramirez, applauds Washington's decision to step up its involvement in Colombia's battle against drugs as "a new beginning." The strategy underlying the aid package, which President Clinton is expected to sign early next month, calls for greater use of the Colombian armed forces in "source interdiction" and envisions a reduced role for the police. The primary burden of fighting the drug war will now fall on three new antinarcotics battalions created in the armed forces with American money and training. Mr. Ramirez, in an interview at his Defense Ministry headquarters on Friday, dismissed any doubts that these new units are ready to do battle with the leftist guerrillas and right-wing paramilitary units that now play dominant roles in the drug trade. "The United States has a dilemma," he said. "Either it can give us the tools and let us do the job, or the international community takes charge of a problem that is growing out of hand. I think the United States has made the correct decision by giving us the tools we need to do our work." "I see a transition taking place without much trauma," Mr. Ramirez said of General Serrano's retirement. "It is basically the same team of generals in antinarcotics and the other areas, very much trained by Serrano and very much in line with the way we have been working" since Mr. Pastrana took office nearly two years ago. However, General Serrano is stepping down as many of the spectacular gains made against drug trafficking early in his five-and-a-half-year tenure have been erased. Cocaine production has more than doubled in the last five years despite an American-financed program of spraying from the air to eradicate coca crops -- a program that is supposed to expand significantly when American Blackhawk and Huey helicopters, the most costly items in the new aid package, begin arriving in the next few months. General Serrano's personal popularity, based on his folksy manner and image of integrity, had dissolved much of the popular discontent over lawlessness and bolstered American confidence in Colombia's ability to fight its end of the narcotics war, which is fed by drug use and addiction in the United States. The general organized and led the raids that smashed the Cali cartel and imprisoned scores of other drug traffickers on Washington's most-wanted list. He also dismissed 11,400 of his own officers, turning what had been a corrupt and often brutal force into a tough and trim fighting unit that the United States cultivated as a welcome alternative to an incompetent army and the cartel-financed presidency of Ernesto Samper, Mr. Pastrana's predecessor. "Serrano delivered the goods and in many ways was a moral leader for Colombia at a time the country badly needed one, and he was tireless and entirely committed to the antinarcotics fight," said Myles Frechette, who was the United States ambassador here during the late 1990's. "We had so much trust in him that we dealt with him as if he were one of us." Indeed, General Serrano's standing in Washington has remained so high that his superiors, to their dismay and occasional annoyance, have often been eclipsed. When Mr. Pastrana visited Washington last year to lobby for American aid and was rebuked by Republican members of Congress for not having brought General Serrano with him, he had to remind his hosts that "I am the president of Colombia." As General Serrano's successor, Mr. Pastrana has chosen Gen. Luis Ernesto Gilibert Vargas, 57. The grandson of a French police officer sent to Colombia in 1891 to organize the National Police, General Gilibert has a personal commitment to the institution that is unquestioned, but was described by a European diplomat here as being "more cautious and less charismatic" than General Serrano. "One of Serrano's great talents," Mr. Frechette said, "is that he really knew how to deal with Americans and had an understanding of the international situation that the military still doesn't have." At least at first, Mr. Frechette predicted, "there will be adjustment pains" for the Drug Enforcement Administration in adapting to a different operating style under General Gilibert, "who is very competent but doesn't know how to handle Americans as Serrano did." Since his appointment was announced, General Gilibert has made it clear he wants the police force to concentrate more on making Colombians feel more secure at home, at work and on the streets. The implication is that there will be less of a focus on the fight against drug trafficking, as General Gilibert acknowledged in remarks to reporters here last week. "That doesn't mean we are going to forget about this theme," he said. "But at these moments there are other priorities." Currently, Mr. Ramirez said, "we have 195 municipalities in Colombia that are without a police presence" because "their barracks have been destroyed by guerrillas" in armed confrontations. With political pressure building on Mr. Pastrana not to step up the drug war to the detriment of public security, "we are going to have to make an extra effort in the Colombian budget" to support conventional police duties, he said. - --- MAP posted-by: Derek