U.S. SAYS SPRAYING IN COLOMBIA IS SAFE

Anti-Drug Effort To Go On Despite Health Protests

WASHINGTON -- Chemicals sprayed on coca crops in Colombia as part of
a massive campaign against drug trafficking can cause skin and eye
irritations, the State Department acknowledged for the first time
Thursday, but the effects are considered mild, and the Bush
administration plans to push forward aggressively with the program.

Part of the administration's $1.3 billion Plan Colombia initiative to
help the South American country curtail its illicit cocaine industry,
the aerial spraying of herbicides is viewed in Washington as the key
to success. The Bush administration is opening a public-relations
campaign for the spraying program out of concern that it will be
halted by protests in Colombia and opposition from environmentalists.
The State Department's senior official in charge of counternarcotics
said he is so confident of the program's safety that he would be
willing to put his family in a field while it was being sprayed with
the plant killer.

At the same time, Rand Beers acknowledged some evidence of health
risks and enough unanswered questions that the U.S. is launching an
investigation to determine whether the herbicide is safe.

"This particular mixture [of herbicide] does cause slight irritation
to the eyes and the skin," Beers told reporters at a State Department
briefing Thursday. "This is not a totally benign product."

Moreover, Beers acknowledged, the Environmental Protection Agency,
which has been conducting safety studies on some of the chemicals
used in the spraying, has not tested the specific, somewhat more
concentrated mixture being used on the coca fields.

The coca crop eradication program began in Colombia in 1994 but has
accelerated greatly in the past year with the influx of U.S. funding
under Plan Colombia Of the 335,000 acres in Colombia that the CIA
estimates are under coca cultivation, 138,000, or 41 percent, have
been sprayed since December.

2-pronged strategy

Beers said the strategy is twofold: First, destroy as much of the
coca crop as possible, depriving cocaine manufacturers of their raw
material; second, hurt coca growers financially to the point where
they will think twice before replanting a field with a crop they
could lose in a single afternoon.

The spraying will go on, he said, "until it is understood that any
time you grow the illegal product, you are at risk from the
government to the destruction of your crop."

As the spraying campaign has intensified, so has criticism of the
effort. Peasant farmers in especially hard-hit regions have alleged
that the herbicide is causing skin rashes and other illnesses,
particularly among children. Responding to local political pressure,
Colombia top environmental official last spring challenged the safety
of the coca eradication effort. About 3,000 farmers in northeastern
Colombia destroyed a refueling depot for crop-duster aircraft.

Bush administration officials suspect that the growing protests in
Colombia stem not from the spraying's health risks but from its
economic impact.

"If the spraying is successful, it kills their income," Beers said.

A study by a Colombian toxicologist focusing on villages near where
fields have been sprayed examined 29 reported cases of skin problems
and concluded that only three were even possibly attributable to the
herbicide.

"We are unable to determine that there is a health hazard," Beers
said. If efforts under way by Colombian officials as well as
scientists at the EPA and the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention find such evidence, he said, "we will take appropriate
action, whether it is compensation or suspension of the [spraying]
program."

Widely used in U.S.

Current evidence indicates that the key ingredients in the herbicide,
also used widely in the United States, pose no long-lasting health
hazard, assuming they are mixed and applied properly, Beers said. At
the same time, the Bush administration says more work needs to be
done to confirm that.

Questions about the spraying campaign have not been confined to
Colombia Environmental groups in the United States have criticized
the program. The World Wildlife Fund calls the spraying "ecocide" and
likens the chemicals to the Agent Orange defoliant used in Vietnam
and later linked to illnesses in U.S. veterans and Vietnamese.

"Like Agent Orange in Vietnam, this spraying is having a devastating
effect on the wildlife, forests and river ecosystems of " the
Wildlife Fund said in a recent newsletter.

Meanwhile, Colombian President Andres Pastrana stepped up pressure
this week on the guerrillas who finance their operations through
drugs by signing legislation granting the U.S.-backed military
greater latitude to battle the rebels.

The signing has raised concerns among human-rights groups and some in
the U.S. Congress that the added powers will lead to further abuses
by the military, and the measure is expected to be challenged in
Colombia Constitutional Court.

One of the law's most criticized articles allows the president to set
up martial law zones in which local civilian officials would be
subordinate to regional police and military commanders.

The law also allows soldiers to detain suspects longer before handing
them over to a judge and shortens the time allowed for completing
investigations into alleged human-rights abuses by security forces.