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U.S.  MONEY WILL FUND COLOMBIAN CIVIL WAR

U.S.  taxpayers are being asked to fund a war in Colombia.  The $1.5 billion in aid to Colombia approved three years ago dramatically failed.  It focused on killing coca plants with aerial defoliants -- according to the White House Office of National Drug Policy, the coca crop increased by 25 percent last year.

Now the Bush administration is requesting another $700 million in aid to Colombia and the Andean region, most of which is military aid.  It would be used to support the 40-year civil war in Colombia.

Colombia's new president, Alvaro Uribe, has proposed that a million Colombians become informants for government security armed with radios and possibly guns.  Who could control 1 million armed civilians?

When Uribe was governor of Antioquia, a similar program strengthened the illegal paramilitary groups in the region.  This led to a growth in cases of torture, disappearances and massacres.

Sectors of the Colombian military continue to work closely with brutal paramilitary groups that commit the majority of politically motivated killings in Colombia each year, according to the State Department Human Rights Report.

Urge your senators and representatives to vote no on further military aid to Colombia.  Do not support mission creep -- changing the focus of U.S.  aid from counter-narcotics to counter-terrorism.  It is time for the United States to support a negotiated end to the war in Colombia, aid for alternative development programs, judicial reform and support for drug treatment on demand here in this country.

Noreen Ordronneau, Carrboro