Pubdate: Tue, 05 Mar 2002
Source: International Herald-Tribune (France)
Copyright: International Herald Tribune 2002
Contact:  http://www.iht.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/212
Author: Karen DeYoung, The Washington Post

U.S. CONGRESS WARMS UP TO MORE MILITARY AID FOR COLOMBIA

WASHINGTON A series of bold attacks by Colombia's leftist guerrillas and a 
newly tough response by President Andres Pastrana have begun to shift 
long-standing resistance on Capitol Hill to expanded U.S. military 
involvement there, encouraging Bush administration officials who believe 
Colombia should be included in the administration's counterterrorism efforts.

Since January, forces of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia have 
hijacked a domestic airliner, kidnapped leading political figures and 
targeted major national electrical and water installations. The police have 
charged the group with torturing and killing a Colombian senator, whose 
body was found in a ravine outside Bogota. Colombia's 40 years of warfare 
have been characterized by spectacular brutality that has left tens of 
thousands dead. It is considered the kidnapping capital of the world - in 
1999, a separate leftist group burst into Mass at a Medellin church and 
marched the congregation into the mountains as hostages.

Rightist paramilitary forces have slain hundreds of innocent rural 
villagers for alleged guerrilla complicity. Before the guerrillas and the 
paramilitary force took over much of the country's cocaine and heroin 
business, drug cartels regularly bombed and slaughtered civilians. But the 
timing and scope of the revolutionary group's actions, amid the new 
anti-terrorism focus of U.S. foreign policy, have provoked a strong 
reaction in Washington. Combined with the guerrillas' unyielding stance 
during three years of government peace talks that Pastrana has now ended, 
and their increasing dependence on the drug trade, the recent attacks 
appear to have ended any claim by the group to political legitimacy and 
changed the label applied to them from "insurgents" to "terrorists."

Although the Bush administration has not seen the need to consult Congress 
on new anti-terrorism efforts in countries such as Georgia and Yemen, 
military aid to Colombia has a long history of legislative consultation. 
Congress restricted nearly $2 billion in largely military aid approved for 
Colombia over the last two years to stopping the production and export of 
narcotics, and imposed tough human rights restrictions on the military.

But even the leading backers of those limits, including Senator Patrick 
Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who heads the Appropriations subcommittee that 
must approve such funding, have indicated that the counternarcotics policy 
should now be reviewed.

Leahy and others are insistent that human rights limits must be preserved, 
and that Colombia must spend more of its own money on defense. If Colombia 
could "demonstrate it is taking the conditions on aid seriously," said a 
knowledgeable Senate aide, nonnarcotics aid would be considered. In a 
closed-door briefing by State Department officials last week, sources said 
that Representative Jim Kolbe, Republican of Arizona, and Representative 
Nita Lowey, Democrat of New York, the chairman and ranking member of the 
House Appropriations subcommittee on foreign operations, suggested the 
administration was likely to find a receptive audience for proposals to 
help Colombia fight domestic terrorism.

"There is just more support now," said a subcommittee aide, noting that 
Pastrana is calling the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia terrorists, 
after long resistance.

Kolbe, Lowey and others have warned the Bush administration not to look for 
loopholes in current legislation that restricts aid "solely for 
counternarcotics purpose(s)," or to try to evade human rights restrictions. 
Instead, they advised the administration to make a case for new 
anti-terrorism authority in light of what many consider a new threat level 
in Colombia.

But some in Congress may be moving more quickly. Kolbe and others have 
discussed a resolution supporting anti-terrorism aid for Colombia in the 
House to push the White House to action. None of the Colombia proposals 
call for U.S. ground troops.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager