COLOMBIA CALLS FOR DRUGS SUMMIT

BOGOTA Andres Pastrana, Colombia's president, yesterday called on his US
counterpart George W. Bush to host an international summit to re- examine
world drugs policy.

Mr Pastrana's government is implementing controversial and expensive
US-aided efforts to curb drug supply, including aerial herbicide spraying
of more than 65,000 hectares of drug-producing crops this year. But Mr
Pastrana insisted that demand for drugs was the problem facing
anti-narcotics efforts.

"If there is no control over demand we can't do anything," he said. "The
moment has arrived to evaluate world policy against drugs."

Mr Pastrana said Mr Bush should host a world summit to study the
"successes, failures and errors" of the past decade of world counter-
narcotics efforts. Similar meetings involving the US, Mexico and South
American drug-producing nations were held in Colombia and the US in 1990
and 1992, and were attended by Mr Bush's father, then US president.

In recent weeks calls have grown within Colombia for a rethink on
counter-narcotics strategy. They have included demands for legalisation of
the international drugs trade. Supporters of legalisation believe
prohibition of drugs creates big profits that sustain Colombia's
long-running conflict and undermine Mr Pastrana's efforts to bring peace.

The 1990 drugs summit in Cartagena gave rise to the Andean Trade
Preferences Act (Atpa), a US initiative to help drug-producing countries
improve their economies by granting tariff-free access to US markets for
most products.

But Atpa is due to expire this year and Mr Pastrana said he would continue
pushing the US, whose secretary of state, Colin Powell, is to visit
Colombia next week, to widen trade preferences.