Clinton's trip follows his decision last week to grant a national security waiver for the aid, thumbing his nose at congressional critics and human rights organizations that had complained that the Colombian government had not yet met the human rights conditions set forth as a requirement for Plan Colombia.

The administration's decision to move ahead with the aid elicited harsh criticism from a handful of the congressmen and human rights activists who had participated in the six-month process of shepherding the bill through Congress. (Both houses of Congress approved Plan Colombia in early July.)

"You may say that human rights won by including strict language in the aid bill, but what good are words when we can just ignore them? We think this is the wrong policy at the wrong time," said Jose Miguel Vivanco, executive director of the Americas Division of Human Rights Watch, one of the U.S. organizations that worked with Congress during the drafting of the bill. "What the Colombian army's bad apples are hearing from this debate is, 'Human rights is just an official discourse, but in the end we don't need to worry about it,'" he said.

Clinton defended his decision, describing the situation in Colombia as too serious for any delay in the aid. "I think we've protected our fundamental interests in human rights and enabled Plan Colombia to have a chance to succeed, which I think is very, very important for the long-term stability of democracy and human rights in Colombia and for protecting the American people and the Colombian people from the drug traffic," Clinton told reporters in a White House Rose Garden interview.

In fact, as the aid debate continues to loom large in Washington, the civil war in Colombia is escalating. In one four-day period this month, guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and rightist paramilitaries killed 33 civilians. FARC launched a campaign of terror to manipulate elections in several municipalities. Guerrilla promoters toting AK-47s have been summoning local candidates for mayor or city councils to intimidate them.

Paramilitary forces have also engaged in election season arm-twisting. They are believed to be responsible for the murder two weeks ago of Luis Fernando Rincón, a peace promoter who was running for reelection as mayor of Aguachica, a town in the battle-plagued state of César. A former guerrilla fighter who demobilized in the 1990s, Rincón gave up on war to champion the right of civilians to not take sides. "Rincón's murder was a clear political decision to eliminate the center. Every day, it becomes more dangerous to be against the war," said Francisco Santos, a newspaper editor who was forced into exile early this year by FARC guerrillas.

The Clinton administration says Pastrana's government is committed to improving human rights, and that nobody expected changes to be accomplished in the month that transpired between the approval of Plan Colombia and its implementation. And earlier this month, Colombia met at least one of the seven human rights conditions imposed by the U.S. Congress when Pastrana issued a directive establishing that any military personnel accused of human rights violations would be tried in a civilian court.

But Pastrana's directive is not in full compliance, says Vivanco of Human Rights Watch. "The conditions say the civilian courts will investigate all crimes against humanity as demanded by a 1997 constitutional court decision, but Pastrana's directive follows the military penal code," he said, referring to legislation, recently revised under military guidance, that limits civilian oversight to the most extreme army violations, such as genocide, torture, kidnapping and murder. "It ignores extrajudicial executions, as well as rape and common crimes," added Vivanco.

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