Pubdate: Thu, 07 Jun 2007 Source: Houston Chronicle (TX) Copyright: 2007 Houston Chronicle Publishing Company Division, Hearst Newspaper Contact: http://www.chron.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/198 Author: Patty Reinert, and John Otis, HC Washington Bureau DEMOCRATS TO PRESS URIBE ON AID PACKAGE With Signs That His Country Is Losing Its War On Drugs, Democrats Plan To Shift Aid Away From Military And Toward Humanitarian Programs WASHINGTON -- President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia, in Washington yet again to lobby for trade and aid, will be greeted by Democrats planning a dramatic change in U.S. support for the South American nation -- away from military and anti-drug efforts and toward development and human rights projects. Earlier this week, a House Appropriations subcommittee drafting the foreign aid budget cut Colombia's overall aid package by 10 percent, from $590 million to about $530 million. (The country is expected to get an additional $150 million in purely military and police assistance through a separate appropriation in the defense budget bill.) The biggest change, however, is that now that Democrats control Congress, they intend to alter the ratio between military and humanitarian foreign aid to the country. Instead of allocating close to 80 percent to the Colombian military and drug-eradication programs, as has been the case for the past decade, lawmakers are proposing that only 65 percent of the total aid package go to the military, with the remaining 35 percent designated as economic and humanitarian aid. The shift is due in part to mounting evidence that Colombia is losing its war on drugs, and in part to growing concern on Capitol Hill that Uribe's government might be tainted by ties to paramilitary death squads. The full Appropriations Committee is expected to vote on the draft bill next week. "I think we can produce the best Plan Colombia ever," said Rep. Sam Farr, D-Calif., referring to the anti-narcotics program that has cost the U.S. more than $5 billion since 2000. Farr is an Appropriations Committee member who served in the Peace Corps in Colombia in the 1960s and has been working to restructure the aid package with more humanitarian assistance. Farr said he admires Uribe's determination. The Colombian leader has visited Washington twice in the past six weeks to lobby for his country. But the California Democrat warned that "you can wear out your welcome up here." At stake is not only the aid package, but a separate free trade agreement that Congress likely won't take up until late this year or early next. Farr said Uribe's message that free trade is good for everyone needs to be updated. "That's all we heard throughout the Republican majority (in Congress)," he said. "Democrats don't buy that message. They want to see the country we're negotiating with do a lot of self-help." Adam Isacson, who tracks Colombia aid at the Center for International Policy in Washington, called the draft aid package "a very significant change in direction." "The Democrats have long had concerns about Colombia policy and now they are able to write the bill," he said. The Bush administration had requested that 76 percent of the aid to Colombia go to the police and military next year. But House budget writers balked, cutting military aid by about $150 million and increasing economic and humanitarian assistance by $100 million. Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., who chairs the Appropriations Committee's State and Foreign Operations subcommittee, which produced the draft bill, said the idea is to put less emphasis on spraying coca fields and more emphasis on bringing drug traffickers and other criminals to justice. According to a summary of the draft bill obtained by the Houston Chronicle, House Democrats want to increase aid to alternative development programs by $79 million over the administration's request, for a total of $218.5 million, and increase funds for judicial reform and human rights programs by more than $10 million above Bush's request. Demobilization programs aimed at disarming and prosecuting paramilitary fighters also would get a boost in funding under the draft bill, to $23 million, up from the administration's request of $16 million. That money would ease the pressure on Colombia's overworked judicial system, which is now dealing with thousands of cases of paramilitary fighters, many of whom have confessed to horrendous crimes. "It will mean more manpower, better databases and laboratories, and transportation so investigators don't have to take the bus to get to the sites of massacres," Isacson said. The shift in funds also would mean that rural development programs could be expanded to southern Colombia, a guerrilla stronghold that has in the past been targeted for coca fumigation but no assistance for farmers interested in developing alternative crops, Isacson said. Critics of Plan Colombia have long complained that humanitarian aid programs to help rural communities escape from poverty -- and hence prevent peasants from growing drugs or joining the guerrillas -- have been short-changed, while money pumped into the drug war has gone to waste. This week, the White House reported that coca acreage in Colombia jumped by 9 percent in 2006. That news follows a 26 percent jump in coca acreage in 2005. At present, almost as much coca is grown in Colombia as there was in 2001 when Plan Colombia began. The original goal was to cut coca acreage in half within five years. "To insist at this point that more spraying will somehow deter farmers from replanting is not just unrealistic, it's delusional," said John Walsh, a drug policy expert at the Washington Office on Latin America. "This is a big step in the right direction," said Lisa Haugaard, executive director of the Latin American Working Group, a coalition of faith-based and humanitarian policy groups based in Washington. "I think it's a recognition that U.S. counternarcotics policy in Colombia has not worked and that the aerial spray program has been far from effective." But she said the 10 percent overall cut in aid "should not be seen as a negative for Colombia." "It's just a re-worked approach," she said. ================ Reinert reported from Washington; Otis from Bogota, Colombia. - --- MAP posted-by: Steve Heath