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BOGOTA, Colombia — The nearly $5 billion U.S. aid package known as Plan Colombia failed to meet its goal of halving illegal narcotics production in this Andean nation, says a U.S. congressional report released Wednesday.
The General Accounting Office report does note, however, that the mostly military assistance helped Colombia markedly improve security, with kidnapping and murder rates falling and the armed forces greatly diminishing the leftist rebel threat.
U.S. officials have said that aid for Colombia, an estimated $657 million in fiscal 2008, will be trimmed because of the U.S. financial crisis.
Colombia remains the source of 90 percent of the cocaine in the United States and most of the heroin consumed east of the Mississippi River.
