U.N. CALLS FOR INTERNATIONAL MONITORS CONTROLS ON SPRAYING DRUG CROPS

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- A top U.N. anti-drug official called Tuesday
for international monitoring of a U.S.-backed aerial eradication
campaign against drug crops and rejected claims that the program is
not harming peasant farmers.

The statements by Klaus Nyholm, director of U.N. counternarcotics
programs here, came amid growing domestic opposition to crop-spraying
using chemicals and as the U.S. Congress considers additional
drug-fighting aid for the South American country.

A $1.3 billion U.S. aid program is paying for combat helicopters,
troops training and crop dusting planes to wipe out coca and opium
plantations. Colombia is the world's main cocaine exporting nation
and a growing supplier of heroin to the United States.

Nyholm said the United Nations has collected ample evidence that
herbicides are being forcibly sprayed on small farmers food plots.

"We know that despite the government's policy, sometimes small
farmers' plots are hit as well, and that legal crops such as bananas
and beans are being fumigated by mistake," he told a news conference
in Bogota.

Nyholm disputed recent comments by Colombian officials that the
eradication effort is surgically targeting only large-scale coca and
opium plantations run by drug traffickers.

Nyholm said many of the scientific studies dragged out by both
proponents and opponents of the forced eradication program are
biased. He urged an international monitoring mechanism be created to
evaluate the safety and effectiveness of the chemical being used.

Nyholm did not detail his proposal, however, saying only that the
United Nations has asked the World Health Organization to get
involved.

Nyholm urged that the government place more emphasis on funding
alternative development programs, project offering farmers aid to
switch to legal crops such as organic coffee.