COLOMBIAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE QUESTIONS US DRUG POLICY

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- A U.S.-backed program for aerially eradicating
drug crops here has failed, a front-running Colombian presidential
candidate said Sunday, just days before the Bush administration's first
high-level visit. "Today there is more cocaine being produced, more
trafficking, more traffickers and larger areas under cultivation," Horacio
Serpa, a former interior minister who is leading polls ahead of May's
elections, wrote in an editorial in Bogota's Cambio news magazine.

"New and alternative formulas are needed along with a recognition that the
(counter-drug) policies applied to date have been a failure," wrote Serpa,
a member of the opposition Liberal Party.

Elsewhere Sunday, the army announced that U.S.-trained counterdrug troops
seized a jungle refinery where leftist guerrillas were allegedly making
gasoline used to process cocaine.

The spraying of cocaine and heroin-producing crops and U.S. troop training
are part of a $1.3 billion drug-fighting program approved under the Clinton
administration.