While the US is increasingly concerned about the threat to Colombia from Marxist guerrillas and powerful drug barons, it strongly denies that it is planning any military intervention.
Mr Thomas Pickering, Under Secretary for Political Affairs, the third highest official in the State Department, returned from a recent visit to Colombia saying that the reports in Latin America of US military intervention "are totally crazy and utterly without foundation".
It was, however, Mr Pickering's visit to Colombia and its neighbour, Venezuela, last month which had helped to fuel these reports of US intervention. General Barry McCaffrey, the Clinton administration's "Drug Czar" also contributed to the rumours by his statement that Colombia was now "in a state of emergency".
Mr Pickering has tried to calm things down by saying that he had returned from Colombia "sobered but not panicked".
Colombia "faces serious challenges and multiple crises but it is not in danger of being taken over by guerrillas," he said.
Colombia now produces about 80 per cent of the world's cocaine and much of the heroin which gets to the US.
The US wants to see a regional plan which would enable Colombia's neighbours to give assistance to President Pastrana's efforts to combat instability but it has no regional plan of its own, Mr Pickering insisted.
Instead, the US is waiting for Mr Pastrana to come up with his own "comprehensive national strategy" to fight both the drug war and the left-wing guerrilla groups.
A US mission is in Colombia this week to study this plan and see how best the US can help implement it.
This could mean greatly increased financial aid. Gen McCaffrey has already indicated that he wants Congress to treble US aid for combatting drugs trafficking from Latin America to $1 billion.
US army experts have been helping to train an elite Colombian counter-narcotics battalion of 950 soldiers. Five US soldiers died in a plane crash in the Colombian jungle last month.
The US is concerned also at the loss of its military bases in Panama at the end of this year when the canal is handed over to Panamanian control.
Gen McCaffrey has said that the loss of Panama is a "huge problem" and "there has to be some sort of mechanism set up to regain what we had in Panama."
Left-wing rebels freed nearly 100 hostages and ended their occupation of a power plant in south-western police said yesterday. The remaining hostages were released early yesterday after the rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) reached an agreement with the management of the plant, a local police spokesman in Cali said.
At least six Colombian soldiers have been killed in fierce fighting with FARC guerrillas in a rugged mountain region just south of Bogota, an army spokeswoman said. The clashes, which began late on Friday, were still raging Sunday as some 600 elite counterinsurgency troops hunted a column of up to 1,500 guerrillas, the spokeswoman said.