Congress Agrees on Funding for Colombia

Paving the way for a major escalation of U.S. military involvement in Colombia, House and Senate leaders agreed Thursday to free $1.3 billion to fund the beleaguered country’s counterinsurgency and its war on drugs.

The agreement removes the final bar to implementation of the controversial aid package, which the Clinton administration has argued since early this year will stem the flow of illegal drugs from South America. It is designed to help the Colombian military combat leftist guerrillas and right-wing paramilitary groups that appear to have the upper hand in a long-running war against the government. The groups are deeply engaged in heroin and cocaine trafficking.

The Colombia funding is part of a $12-billion spending package that the leaders hope will get final approval in the House and Senate next week. In addition to the Colombia money, the package includes $10.7 billion to pay for U.S. peacekeepers in Kosovo and to provide relief for victims of Hurricane Floyd in September.

“This is a landmark vote, striking the drug war at ground zero--Colombia,” Sen. Paul Coverdell (R-Ga.) said after the Senate overwhelmingly approved the aid package earlier in the day.

At a news conference, he remarked on the surprisingly large, bipartisan majorities that backed the package, a rarity in foreign policy these days despite the tradition of partisanship fading when it comes to international matters.

“On a matter of such significant foreign policy, we had a unified bipartisan effort,” Coverdell said. “It’s almost unanimity. It’s very rare. Frankly, we didn’t expect it to be that strong.”

The United States has long funded counter-narcotics assistance to Colombia, and the amount of funding has been increasing each year, even as exports of cocaine from the South American country have doubled over the last two years. According to the White House, Colombian-processed cocaine accounts for more than 80% of that sold on the U.S. market. U.S. aid to the country jumped from about $50 million in 1998 to $309 million in 1999.

But the new package would further ramp up U.S. involvement in the country. It would provide hundreds of millions of dollars to send U.S. advisors into Colombia to train and equip special counter-narcotics battalions in the military and police, and to refurbish, buy and operate 60 Huey II helicopters. It would also provide aid to Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and other Latin American countries where coca is grown for processing into cocaine in Colombia, and earmarks money for human rights programs in Colombia.

The accord on the aid package, which the embattled government of Colombian President Andres Pastrana has been seeking for more than a year, is a major, if delayed, victory for the White House. But it also virtually guarantees that the U.S. will be drawn deeper into that country’s tangled civil conflict.

President Calls Plan Vital to Democracy

Speaking to reporters after the Senate vowed to endorse the administration plan but before lawmakers from both houses reached agreement, President Clinton said he is grateful that the package is moving forward. He described it as essential to preserving Colombia’s struggling democracy as the South American nation fights escalating drug traffic and a civil war.

The Colombians are “in the fight of their lives for their very way of life, with the combined pressure of a guerrilla war that’s been going on for decades and the rise of the narco-traffickers over the last two decades,” Clinton said.

The agreement represents a middle ground between the $934 million approved by the 95-4 vote in the Senate on Thursday as part of a $13.4-billion foreign aid bill, and the $1.7 billion in Colombia aid the House agreed to in March.

But the compromise sum matches what the White House had requested. Pushed by a small group of Republican leaders in Congress, the administration gave Colombia $309 million in 1999 and an additional $300 million this year, making it the fourth-largest recipient of U.S. aid after Israel, Egypt and Jordan.

The precise allocation of the funds will be determined in conference negotiations between the House and Senate. Leaders of the two bodies plan to attach the entire $12-billion spending package to a popular military construction spending bill that is in conference. It is expected to be the first of the year’s spending bills to clear Congress.

The merits of further involvement in Colombia have been the subject of fierce debate in Washington for almost a year. Lawmakers from both parties have warned that such aid could be the beginning of a massive escalation of the U.S. military role in the beleaguered country.

Lawmakers engaged in passionate debate this week on the aid package before endorsing it, with supporters and opponents spread across the partisan spectrum. Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.) pointed to the shoddy human rights record of the Colombian military.

“I have to question dramatically changing the ratio of our support and giving much, much more to the military linked to these death squads,” Wellstone said on the Senate floor Wednesday. “I don’t think that’s what our country is about.”

Critics Question Aid to Colombian Military

And Sen. Slade Gorton (R-Wash.) questioned whether helping Colombia fight a civil insurgency can decrease the amount of narcotics sold on U.S. streets.

“We are asked to engage in another civil war, with a major commitment to equipment and training for the Colombian army,” Gorton said. “Very rarely does a commitment like this get made without escalating into another civil war.”

Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), the majority leader and a strong supporter of the package, called for giving Colombians “the aid that they need, the equipment that they need to fight these massive narcotics traffickers themselves in this part of the world.”

Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) said: “This package may not be perfect, but our delay in responding to a neighbor’s call for help is getting old. . . . When we step up and offer the Colombian democracy a chance to fight for themselves, we’re not only doing it for them, we’re doing it for ourselves.”

The overall foreign aid measure approved by the Senate is $1.7 billion less than Clinton had requested, drawing strong complaints--but no veto threats--from the administration. The Senate cut Clinton’s request for $262 million for the world’s poorest countries to just $75 million.

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Times staff writer Janet Hook contributed to this report.