James M. Jeffords: “as Americans, we have two vital tasks in our relations with Colombia. We are obligated to help a neighbor that is…”

“as Americans, we have two vital tasks in our relations with Colombia. We are obligated to help a neighbor that is struggling to build democracy and civil society, and it is in our best interest to assist them in halting the flow of lethal narcotics from the Andean mountains of Colombia to American communities. These are the two underlying grounds for the Clinton Administration's ``Plan Colombia,'' a request for $1.07 billion in emergency supplemental funds over the next two years to aid Colombia. After a painful decade of violence, the Colombian people have boldly elected an unassailable ally of democracy and reconciliation, President Andres Pastrana, and they are demanding an end to human rights abuses and impunity by both the paramilitaries and the FARC guerillas. At the same time, the lawlessness and violence of southern Colombia have permitted the narcotics dealers to widen their cultivation and consolidate their delivery routes into the U.S. With the remarkable success of U.S. Government anti-narcotics programs in Peru and Bolivia, eighty percent of the heroin consumed in the U.S. is now cultivated in Colombia. We have no choice now but to focus our anti-drug efforts in Colombia. While I realize that we must bring pressure to bear on the drug cartels, my experience with Central America in the 1980s leads me to be very skeptical about the utility of the military response to social and political problems.”