WASHINGTON - Putting most of its bets on Blackhawk helicopters and US intelligence assistance, the Clinton administration yesterday proposed a $1.6 billion plan to help the besieged government of Colombia attack the multiplying producers of cocaine and heroin.
The package, which drew criticism from human rights groups and some US congressmen for its dependence on military solutions, would make Colombia the third-largest recipient of US foreign aid, behind Israel and Egypt. The two-year plan would represent a $1.3 billion increase, since Colombia already receives $150 million annually.
President Clinton said the aid was "urgently needed" to keep "illegal drugs off our shores" and to "help Colombia promote peace."
While the plan includes $219 million in economic, social development, and human rights assistance, the centerpieces of the proposal were impossible to miss: 84 percent of $954 million in this year's emergency request would go toward 30 Blackhawk helicopters; 33 Huey helicopters; training two battalions; providing aircraft and intelligence for drug interdiction; and equipment to destroy coca and poppy fields.
"This is a military-heavy package," acknowledged one senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "But we are trying to right the balance in Colombia." He said there would not be a substantial increase in the number of US military advisers in Colombia, which now varies from 100 to 200.
"The proposal also includes $238 million under the heading of intelligence to help locate drug labs and intercept drug shipments.
The plan, which bears some similarities to a Republican congressional proposal and won qualified support yesterday from House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, was unveiled just before the Central Intelligence Agency is due to release its estimates of Colombian cocaine production in 1999.
That estimate is likely to be a shocker: It could be three times higher than the 1998 figure of 165 metric tons of cocaine, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy said.
Barry McCaffrey, the retired four-star Army general who heads the drug control policy office, said yesterday that four-fifths of cocaine and heroin entering the United States either comes from Colombia or is shipped through the Andean nation.
McCaffrey said Americans shouldn't look at the plan as fighting a distant battle in Colombia but as something that directly affects their communities.
"The focus of the program is not just to benefit the 35 million people of Colombia, but it is to also benefit American children," he told reporters in the White House's Roosevelt Room.
More than a third of Colombia is controlled by guerrillas in the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. FARC-controlled territory includes the two largest areas of coca production, the Putumayo and Guaviare provinces. US officials said the first step must be for Colombian police and military to reclaim those areas.
But Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright said the Clinton administration hopes peace talks between FARC and the government are restarted. "This is not a counter-insurgency program," Albright said. "This is a counter-narcotrafficking program."
In Bogota, Colombian President Andres Pastrana said he was "satisfied" with the package.
With this aid, Pastrana said, Clinton "recognizes that drug trafficking is a responsibility shared by both producers and consumers," a point often made by Colombians who attribute the drug problems to demand from the United States and Europe.
Other Colombians feared that the heavy emphasis on weaponry would escalate the country's 40-year-old civil war among the government, leftist guerrillas, and right-wing paramilitary groups.
"To me, this is the worst path we could take right now," said Ricardo vargas Meza, director of Accion Andina, a leading antidrug advocacy group. " Clearly this package will strengthen the army. But in what direction? To fight drugs or to fight guerrillas?"
US Representative William Delahunt, a Quincy Democrat who has traveled to Colombia twice in the last year, also said he feared the military emphasis could hurt the peace process. "We will never achieve our goal of reducing the flow of drugs into our country until peace is achieved there," Delahunt said. "It isn't going to be done with bullets and helicopters."