Pubdate: Wed, 12 Jul 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 AS PROBLEMS MOUNT, COLOMBIA'S PRESIDENT SHUFFLES HIS CABINET RIO DE JANEIRO, July 11 -- In an effort to revive the Colombian government's sharply declining political and economic fortunes, President Andres Pastrana replaced more than a third of his cabinet today, bringing in several figures associated with opposition parties in hopes of dampening their campaign to cripple his government. The long-anticipated cabinet shuffle comes as the Clinton administration is poised to begin delivering an emergency $1.3 billion aid package, composed mostly of military assistance, to Colombia and neighboring countries. The money is intended to slow a huge increase in cocaine and heroin production and thereby weaken the finances of Marxist-Leninist guerrilla groups that have been fighting the Colombian government since the mid-1960's. "This is a cabinet of national unity, of great openness," said Minister of the Interior Humberto de la Calle, himself a member of the opposition Liberal Party who took office barely three months ago. Of the 22 posts in the cabinet, slightly more than half are now held by members of Mr. Pastrana's Conservative Party, with the rest in the hands of Liberals and independents. Nine changes were announced as a result of the the shakeup, which began Friday night with the resignation of Minister of Finance Juan Camilo Restrepo. Planning Director Mauricio Cardenas and Minister of Economic Development Jaime Cabal Sanclemente stepped down today, meaning that all three of the government's top economic leaders will be new. The shuffle did not, though, affect the two officials who have the most contact with the United States and are most closely identified with the American aid package, part of a larger $7.5 billion counter-narcotics and social support program that Mr. Pastrana calls "Plan Colombia." Luis Fernando Ramirez Acuna remains as minister of defense, while Guillermo Fernandez de Soto continues in the foreign affairs portfolio. But the composition of the restructured cabinet pitches the Pastrana government somewhat further to the left. The new minister of labor, Angelino Garzon, for instance, is a former president of the country's largest trade union federation and was also a vice president of the Patriotic Union, a leftist political coalition with links to leftist guerrillas that was all but wiped out by paramilitary death squads in the late 1980's and early 1990's. "We consider Angelino Garzon to be a friend of the labor movement and wish him success in his new post," Julio Roberto Gomez, president of the General Confederation of Democratic Workers, a labor group that has often quarreled with Mr. Pastrana, told a local radio station. "We regard his appointment as a piece of good news." Mr. Pastrana took office two years ago next month with the highest vote total ever recorded by a candidate for president of Colombia. But he has been weakened, among other things, by an apparent lack of progress in peace negotiations with the two main guerrilla groups and by what economic analysts describe as the worst recession in a century, with unemployment at 20 percent and the peso at an all-time low against the dollar. Hoping to arrest that decline, this spring he proposed a referendum to replace Congress, which is dominated by the Liberals and is widely seen as corrupt and ineffective, with a new and more-streamlined body. But the plan backfired, and Mr. Pastrana was left with a poisoned relationship with Congress and a diminished ability to govern, after legislators suggested that the president's job be put to a vote as well. - --- MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens