ASSAULT ON DRUG CROP IS DELAYED

Bankruptcy halts acquisition of planes to spray Colombian fields

WASHINGTON -- The State Department will delay plans to expand its fleet of
drug spraying planes in Colombia after the planes' bankrupt manufacturer
shut down its assembly lines this month.

Ayres Corp. of Albany, Ga., had won the contract without having to compete
for it, despite a rival's claim Ayres' shaky finances made it undependable.

The delay is a setback to the $1.3 billion, U.S.-funded plan to step up
drug eradication in Colombia. Since the mid-1990s, State Department
contractors have worked with Colombian police in fumigating coca and opium
crops, the raw materials for cocaine and heroin.

Ayres halted production Aug. 3, just five days before it was due to deliver
the first of nine single-engine, propeller-driven T-65 planes.

Those planes, along with three twin-engine OV-10 planes the State
Department is refurbishing, would have increased the 11-plane fleet to 23
planes by February.

The additional planes are "extremely important because we're trying to go
after an exploding amount of coca production and opium production," said
Barry McCaffrey, the former White House drug policy director.

"You want to have a mass of spray aircraft that you can move around the
country and attack these criminal operations all in one fell swoop and then
move somewhere else," he said.

The State Department declined to provide specifics on the shutdown's
effect. "We will not be able to increase our support of the Colombian
National Police's aerial eradication program as quickly as we had
originally envisioned," the department said.

Congress provided $20 million for the Ayres planes and the refurbished
OV-10s. Fred Ayres, the president of the plane company, said Ayres' share
of that was about $15 million.

Ayres' main creditor, GATX Capital Corp. of San Francisco, has taken over
the company's assets and hopes to find a buyer soon, GATX spokesman Glenn
Hickerson said. If it does, the first planes could be completed by year's
end, he said.

It was not clear if the State Department would wait for the sale. The
department said it is exploring its legal options and examining ways to get
planes soon.