U.S. GROUP WRAPS UP COLOMBIA DRUG TALKS

BOGOTA, Colombia -- The first high-level Bush administration visit to
Colombia ended Friday amid the most serious crisis in the peace process
here since the effort started anew nearly three years ago.

U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Marc Grossman headed a
delegation of government Andean specialists for three days of meetings with
top Colombian officials and a tour of U.S.-backed drug- eradication efforts.

Grossman said the visit was part of an ongoing administration review of
Plan Colombia, the U.S.-financed initiative to reduce by half the
production of illegal drugs in five years.

Grossman said he was satisfied with the direction of the plan but did not
rule out future changes. Secretary of State Colin Powell will visit
Colombia on Sept. 11-12 to decide whether to alter the carrot- and-stick
policy of fumigating coca plants, which are used to produce cocaine, while
providing development money to poor farmers who voluntarily rip out their
illegal crops.

Colombian and international observers have criticized U.S. policy,
maintaining that it overemphasizes military and counternarcotics aid and
shortchanges the peace process.

However, of more pressing concern for the Colombian government is the
demilitarized zone that President Andres Pastrana has ceded to the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, a leftist rebel group known as
FARC, in 1999.

Pastrana must decide by next month whether to continue the zone, the
existence of which has come under increasing criticism by groups as diverse
as the Bush administration and Human Rights Watch.

Chief among the complaints is that FARC has used the area less for peace
than for war. The zone has served as a military training ground for FARC's
30,000 troops, a region for growing coca plants and a temporary prison for
kidnap victims that FARC uses to help finance its 4-decade-old
insurrection, according to U.S. and Colombian officials.

More recently, FARC allegedly has used the zone for a sort of bomb college
put on by three suspected Irish Republican Army members who were arrested
Aug. 11.