DESPITE AID, COLOMBIA DRUG WAR IN DISARRAY

U.S. About To Provide Over $1 Billion To Effort

BOGOTA, Colombia -- The United States is committing more than $1 billion to
Colombia's struggle against drug production and trafficking just as the
government here is stumbling politically and the national police chief who
did the most to win U.S. trust in his country's efforts has stepped down.

The U.S. aid package, likely to total $1.3 billion after the Senate
approved it Wednesday, foresees reduced reliance on the 115,000-member
National Police and places greater emphasis on the armed forces.

But the retiring police chief, Gen. Rosso Jose Serrano, and his men would
never have been called upon to lead the counternarcotics fight in the past
had Washington not harbored grave doubts about the fighting ability and
human rights record of the Colombian armed forces.

And President Andres Pastrana, approaching the midpoint of his four-year
term, is under increasing fire after losing key aides, including his
interior minister, chief of staff and chief negotiator with the rebels, who
have taken over drug production and made increasing inroads.

Meanwhile, public patience with the president's failure to make a deal with
leftist guerrillas who have been battling the government for decades is
wearing thin.

Serrano, 58, was praised by his supporters on Capitol Hill as "the best cop
in the world." He stepped down Friday, having announced earlier this month
that he was retiring because "I have been to so many police officers'
funerals that I can't bear another."

About 2,000 police officers have been killed since 1994 in this country,
which has a murder rate 8-10 times higher than the United States and, with
more than 3,000 abductions in 1999, the highest kidnapping rate in the
world. The U.S. State Department calls it one of the most dangerous
countries in the world and says common criminals, not just drug dealers,
share much of the blame.

Many people are convinced that the drug war is being waged at the expense
of their own security.

"The aggravation of drug trafficking and the armed conflict have translated
into the police directing their priorities to the defense of the state and
its institutions," said Alvaro Camacho, director of the Institute of
Political Studies at the National University.

As a result, he said, the police "role of supporting the citizenry has been
debilitated" and they "have become an actor in the war, separated from the
civilian population."

Perhaps because of such sentiments, Colombia's defense minister, Luis
Fernando Ramirez, applauds Washington's decision to step up its involvement
in Colombia's battle against drugs as "a new beginning."

The strategy underlying the aid package, which President Clinton is
expected to sign early next month, calls for greater use of the Colombian
armed forces in "source interdiction," and it envisions a reduced role for
the police.

The primary burden of fighting the drug war will now fall on three new
anti-narcotics battalions created in the armed forces with U.S. money and
training.

Ramirez, in an interview at his Defense Ministry headquarters Friday,
dismissed any doubts that these new units are ready to do battle with the
leftist guerrillas and right-wing paramilitary units that now play dominant
roles in the drug trade.

Who does the job?

"The United States has a dilemma," he said. "Either it can give us the
tools and let us do the job, or the international community takes charge of
a problem that is growing out of hand. I think the United States has made
the correct decision by giving us the tools we need to do our work.

"I see a transition taking place without much trauma," Ramirez said of
Serrano's retirement. "It is basically the same team of generals in
anti-narcotics and the other areas, very much trained by Serrano and very
much in line with the way we have been working" since Pastrana took office
nearly two years ago.

However, Serrano is stepping down as many of the spectacular gains made
against drug trafficking early in his 51/2-year tenure have been erased.

Cocaine production has more than doubled in the last five years despite a
U.S.-financed program of spraying from the air to eradicate coca crops -- a
program that is supposed to expand significantly if U.S. Blackhawk and Huey
helicopters, the most costly items in the new aid package, begin arriving
in the next few months.

Serrano's personal popularity, based on his folksy manner and image of
integrity, had dissolved much of the popular discontent over lawlessness
and had bolstered U.S. confidence in Colombia's ability to fight its end of
the narcotics war -- a war that is partly fed by drug use and addiction in
the United States.

General led raids

The general organized and led the raids that smashed the Cali cartel and
imprisoned scores of other drug traffickers on Washington's most-wanted list.

He also dismissed 11,400 of his own officers, turning what had been a
corrupt and often brutal force into a tough and trim fighting unit that the
United States cultivated as a welcome alternative to an incompetent army
and the cartel-financed presidency of Ernesto Samper, Pastrana's predecessor.

"Serrano delivered the goods and in many ways was a moral leader for
Colombia at a time the country badly needed one, and he was tireless and
entirely committed to the anti-narcotics fight," said Myles Frechette, who
was the U.S. ambassador here during the late 1990s.

"We had so much trust in him that we dealt with him as if he were one of us."

Indeed, Serrano's standing in Washington has remained so high that his
superiors, to their dismay and occasional annoyance, have often been eclipsed.

When Pastrana visited Washington last year to lobby for U.S. aid and was
rebuked by Republican members of Congress for not having brought Serrano
with him, he had to remind his hosts, "I am the president of Colombia."

As Serrano's successor, Pastrana has named Gen. Luis Ernesto Gilibert, 57.
The grandson of a French police officer sent to Colombia in 1891 to
organize the National Police, Gilibert has a personal commitment to the
institution that is unquestioned, but he was described by a European
diplomat as being "more cautious and less charismatic" than Serrano.

'Adjustment pains'

"One of Serrano's great talents," Frechette said, "is that he really knew
how to deal with Americans and had an understanding of the international
situation that the military still doesn't have."

At least at first, Frechette predicted, "there will be adjustment pains"
for the Drug Enforcement Administration in adapting to a different
operating style under Gilibert, "who is very competent but doesn't know how
to handle Americans as Serrano did."

Since his appointment was announced, Gilibert has made it clear that he
wants the police force to concentrate more on making Colombians feel more
secure at home, at work and on the streets.

The implication is that there will be less of a focus on the fight against
drug trafficking, as Gilibert acknowledged in remarks to reporters here
last week.

"That doesn't mean we are going to forget about this theme," he said. "But
at these moments there are other priorities."

Currently, Ramirez said, "We have 195 municipalities in Colombia that are
without a police presence" because "their barracks have been destroyed by
guerrillas" in armed confrontations.

With political pressure building on Pastrana not to step up the drug war to
the detriment of public security, "We are going to have to make an extra
effort in the Colombian budget" to support conventional police duties, he said.