Clinton Backs $1-Billion Plan for Colombia

President Clinton plans to announce a massive new aid program for Colombia totaling more than $1 billion in military and development assistance over the next two years. It would be used to combat narcotics cultivation and trafficking and bolster the Latin American country’s beleaguered democracy.

More than half the money will be in a White House request for a supplemental appropriation for this fiscal year, and the remainder will be part of the fiscal year 2001 budget that the administration is expected to send to Congress on Feb. 7, administration officials said.

Colombia is the third-largest recipient of U.S. military aid, after Israel and Egypt. It received $289 million last year and is in line for more than $200 million in the current budget. But skyrocketing Colombian cocaine and heroin production and exports to the United States, and the Bogota government’s struggle against Marxist guerrillas involved in drug trafficking, led to bipartisan consensus last year that the U.S. effort should be sharply increased.

The basic framework of the administration’s proposal, which is expected to be unveiled next week, has been determined, although sources cautioned that discussions are still underway among the Office of Management and Budget, the State Department, the Pentagon and the Office of National Drug Control Policy on how the money will be distributed.

Congressional Republicans calling for stepped-up anti-drug action criticized the administration last fall for promising and then failing to produce a significant new aid plan for Colombia before the current budget was adopted. In response, Clinton last month pledged a package for early this year “that will be substantial, effective, and have broad bipartisan support.”

Republicans introduced a $1.5-billion, three-year aid proposal in November. Differences in the two plans are expected to reflect competing views on whether the bulk of the money should go directly into police and military counter-drug efforts, as the GOP wants, or be divided among those efforts and government infrastructure and economic assistance, as Colombian President Andres Pastrana has requested.