As US Secretary of State Colin Powell holds talks with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe on tackling illegal drugs and terrorism, one of the country's leading dailies complains the country is not getting the help it deserves.

Mr Powell must be in no doubt about the huge efforts we Colombians are making to save our land from a war whose root cause lies in his own country El Tiempo

El Tiempo, is unhappy that "Colombia feels itself alone in the multiple wars it is fighting and fails to receive recognition for its high level of sacrifice".

Not only is there a lack of political co-ordination between the Bush and Uribe governments, the daily argues, "if we want to defeat terrorism and drugs-fuelled insurgency, we need to broaden our intelligence collaboration, notably in the technological sphere."

Huge cost

It calls for a resumption of the interception of planes carrying drugs, which it says has been "inexplicably delayed" and is far more effective than the massive fumigation programmes whose results are "dubious, but which have perverse social, political and ecological repercussions".

"Mr Powell must be in no doubt about the huge efforts we Colombians are making...to save our land from a war whose root cause lies in his own country."

El Tiempo also points out that Mr Powell will seek to gain Colombia's backing for Washington's policy on Iraq, especially as it takes over the presidency of the UN Security Council this month.

The Uribe administration enjoys great prestige in the United States Colombia's Washington envoy in El Espectador

Bogota's El Espectador quotes Mr Powell as saying Washington "is committed to Uribe's national security policy".

Presidential sources told the daily that Mr Uribe would also seek to enlist Washington's help in securing lines of international credit to tackle the public deficit, badly affected by heavy state expenditure on the fight against rebels and the drugs trade.

Prestige

Colombia's ambassador to Washington, Luis Alberto Moreno is quoted by El Espectador as saying the Uribe administration "enjoys great prestige in the United States, especially for the way it has tackled its first 100 days in office".

Colombian society is keen and determined to change the conditions which have generated inequality and poverty El Pais

An editorial in El Pais accuses the largest rebel group, the FARC, of refusing to accept the government's peace overtures.

"Today, Colombian society is keen and determined to change the conditions which have generated inequality and poverty. But the effort to achieve it always collapses against the ignominious wall of violence put up by the criminal groups."

El Heraldo is in no doubt that Mr Powell is visiting to give "his full backing to President Uribe's security policy".

BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.