Colombia Is No Vietnam, U.S. Says

President Clinton swooped into this troubled country Wednesday to showcase American determination to face down leftist rebels and drug traffickers. But he pledged that aiding Colombia will not embroil the U.S. in a military escalation echoing the Vietnam War.

“I reject the idea that we must choose between supporting peace and fighting drugs. We can do both; indeed, to succeed, we must do both,” Clinton said at a ceremony to tout $1.3 billion in U.S. military and social assistance to bolster President Andres Pastrana’s government against powerful guerrilla forces intertwined with drug traffickers.

The aid, approved by Congress in June, is the centerpiece of a broader, $7.5-billion Colombian plan to fight the drug scourge, help refugees and strengthen government institutions.

“A condition of this aid is that we are not going to get into a shooting war, that it is not Vietnam, neither is it Yankee imperialism,” Clinton said.

Colombia produces an estimated 90% of the cocaine that enters the United States. The guerrilla forces are linked to much of the trade.

Thousands of people lined the streets of this suddenly spiffed-up colonial city to catch a glimpse of Clinton during his nine-hour visit, the first by a U.S. president to Colombia in a decade.

On the outskirts of the city were thousands more who missed the fanfare. Refugees from the bitter war that has escalated since rebels began to piggyback on the drug trade during the 1990s, they live in squalor in tent camps--a testament to the chaos that has all but ripped this country apart.

Clinton was accompanied by House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and 10 other senior members of Congress from both major parties, all eager to demonstrate their commitment to the fight against drugs.

Atty. Gen. Janet Reno, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and federal anti-drug czar Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey also were on the trip, which included a private meeting between Clinton and Pastrana.

The Colombian leader, looking delighted at finally having the long-promised aid in hand, thanked Clinton and congressional leaders for its passage.

“Today there exists between our two countries a much closer commitment than at any other time in our common history,” Pastrana said. The support shows that the U.S. understands that the drug problem is international in scope, he said.

The visit is meant to emphasize a close new relationship between the U.S. and Pastrana’s government, which has pledged to attack drug trafficking at its roots. Until Pastrana took office just over two years ago, relations between the two countries had cooled as evidence emerged that Colombian government figures had ties to the country’s then-leading drug cartels.

But in recent months, the U.S. has thrown its weight behind Pastrana’s efforts. Congress approved the aid package by a bipartisan majority. Last week, Clinton waived several human rights conditions put on the aid by Congress, declaring Colombia a national security priority.

The aid--much of it for military assistance, including 60 attack helicopters and 500 U.S. Army and intelligence instructors--has been controversial. It is more money than the U.S. has invested in a Latin American military effort since the Central American conflicts of the 1980s, when Washington and the Soviet Union vied for influence in the region.

The Clinton administration argues that the aid is essential to stem the rise in drug exports that fund leftist guerrillas and right-wing paramilitary groups. Critics fear that the aid will only increase the level of violence.

Human rights groups charge that the effort is ill-advised and short on social assistance. They brandish ample evidence that Colombia’s military and police forces have committed abuses. Conservatives say the aid package comes too late.

On Wednesday, though, the politicians mounted a united front.

“What we need to do is be able to stop the drug business and help the Colombians [to] stop it themselves,” Hastert told reporters aboard Air Force One. “This whole issue is not the old colonial aspect of it or us coming in to try to start a war; it’s trying to stabilize the country, give them the help [so] that they can help themselves. And also, we have a stake in this too. It’s our kids and our future.”

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), an early critic of the aid package, said he is now behind it. But he warned Pastrana that the U.S. expects a commitment to protect human rights.

“We’re in it for the long haul, as long as you are able to demonstrate, as you have in the past to my countrymen, that human rights is very high on your agenda,” he said.

Clinton seconded Biden’s warning but said he has faith that Pastrana will move as quickly as possible to improve Colombia’s human rights record.

“I don’t think anyone seriously believes that either the guerrillas or the narco-traffickers will be more careful with human rights than this president,” Clinton said. “On the other hand, you heard what Joe Biden said: If there is to be continued support from the Congress and the next president, then Colombia must meet the requirements of the law.”

The U.S. has steadily increased its anti-narcotics assistance to Colombia during Clinton’s second term, to $300 million this year from $65 million in 1996. Still, coca production in the country has surged during that time.

Hoping for greater success from the coming infusion of money, Clinton pressed Pastrana on Wednesday to complement the new military anti-narcotics offensive with civilian aid programs to avert a refugee crisis that could spill into neighboring countries and add fighters to the guerrilla ranks.

In his meeting with Clinton, aides said, Pastrana made a case for broad new trade privileges from the U.S. that he hopes would boost the country’s economy. He also asked the U.S. to play a more active role in spurring peace talks between the guerrilla forces and the government.

The Colombian economy was dealt a blow this year when the U.S. signed a trade agreement with Caribbean nations. Clinton said he and Hastert support legislation that would grant some of the same trade preferences to Colombia.

The Colombian economy is in shreds, with official unemployment topping 20%. Pastrana’s approval ratings in opinion polls have plummeted to about 30%. The nation’s Congress is largely out of Pastrana’s control, and several of his Cabinet members have resigned. Rivals are campaigning to replace him.

The fact that the two leaders met here, rather than in Bogota, the besieged capital about 400 miles to the southeast, is a measure of the breakdown in public order. Crime is soaring. In Colombia, someone is taken hostage every 3 1/2 hours, and a slaying is committed every 20 minutes on average, police statistics show.

As the economy and government falter, the country’s oldest and most powerful guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, is on the ascendant. The group controls a swath of the country as large as Switzerland, and is believed to have made more than $2 billion in the past eight years from links to the drug trade.

Peace talks with the guerrillas are stalled, and the group--along with rebels of the smaller National Liberation Army, or ELN--has pledged to launch more attacks in the face of the U.S. aid.

The U.S. has committed itself, over the next 18 months, to train and equip the Colombian army and police forces battling drug traffickers and guerrillas. But the U.S. package also includes $238 million for development programs, drug crop substitution, judicial reform and human rights programs. While that is a small percentage of the total, it is a tenfold increase in the money now being spent by the U.S. on such programs in Colombia.

Keenly aware of the controversies surrounding the plan, the White House scheduled Clinton’s visit to shift attention away from military assistance and toward efforts to build civil institutions and lure peasants away from the drug trade.

Instead of visiting a military installation where forces trained by American advisors will use advanced, U.S.-made helicopters to eradicate coca crops and hit guerrilla and drug trafficking strongholds, Clinton paid a call on a new, U.S.-financed community legal aid center. He walked the cobbled streets of the picturesque colonial city greeting pedestrians and visited a customs house, where officials showed him U.S.-supplied boats for intercepting traffickers and seized ships with hidden compartments for drug shipments.

But the realities of Colombian life invaded throughout the carefully planned day.

Six blocks from one of the sites visited by Clinton, police arrested three men with bomb-making materials. In Bogota, witnesses said an 18-year-old police officer was killed at the National University when protesters lobbed a homemade bomb at his head.

Thousands of Colombian police and troops patrolled Cartagena during Clinton’s visit. Security agents from the U.S. and Colombia were everywhere. Guerrillas had pledged to step up attacks, and there were 32 raids in 13 provinces during the preceding 24 hours.

Even in this relatively peaceful resort city, White House aides were so worried about guerrilla threats that the president did not stay the night.

And at a government guest house, dozens of women who have lost husbands and sons to guerrilla attacks were introduced to Clinton. At each encounter, the president clutched the hand of the woman and said, “I’m sorry.”

Carmen Elisa Nunez presented the president with a medal for valor that her husband, army Capt. Wilson Quintero Martinez, had won.

Later, Nunez said of Clinton: “He is with us. This fight is for all of us, Americans and Colombians.”