COLOMBIA DRUG POLICY QUESTIONED

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - President Andres Pastrana's U.S.-backed
offensive against drug crops has hit a flurry of domestic opposition
from critics who say aerial spraying harms people and the environment,
punishes poor farmers and has failed to stem drug trafficking.

The groundswell against Plan Colombia comes as the U.S. Congress debates
new aid for Colombia and Washington prepares to deliver sophisticated
helicopters as part of a $1.3 billion aid package approved last year in
support of the program.

The first three of 16 Blackhawk helicopters are expected to arrive by
the end of July and the remainder by December. The helicopters will give
greater mobility to U.S.-trained army battalions assigned to destroy
jungle drug laboratories and provide security against rebel fire for
aerial spraying missions using crop-killing herbicides.

The State Department also expects to deliver four additional
crop-dusting planes next month and eight more by February.

Colombian and U.S. officials have given repeated assurances that the
eradication push only targets large-scale coca and opium plantations
operated by drug traffickers. They say the chemical used, a variant of
the popular backyard fertilizer Roundup, is ecologically harmless and
safe for humans.

But environmentalists, human rights activists and small farmers - who
say their crops are also being hit - remain staunchly opposed.

Their arguments are now echoing on the political level, where governors
from the main drug-producing states, Colombia's top human rights
official, the nation's comptroller general and a leading lawmaker from
Pastrana's own party came out this week against the policy.

Conservative Party Sen. Juan Manuel Ospina said Thursday he plans to
introduce legislation sharply scaling back forced aerial fumigation,
requiring more emphasis on aid to help farmers switch to legal crops,
and decriminalizing small drug plots. Fumigation ``has been absolutely
ineffective in reducing or eliminating the areas under cultivation,''
Ospina said in an interview.

At a congressional hearing Wednesday, Comptroller Carlos Ossa called for
fumigation to be suspended altogether, saying it is proceeding without
an approved environmental protection plan. Federal human rights
ombudsman Eduardo Cifuentes also demanded a stop, adding that government
offers of compensation for poor farmers are lagging far behind the
spraying.

Earlier in the week, six governors from some of the country's main drug
producing states forced a meeting with top officials in Bogota in which
they warned current policies could provoke mass protests in their
regions.

So far, Pastrana shows no signs of bending.

Spraying of heroin plantations continued this week in Cauca and Narino,
even as those states' governors were in Bogota registering their
protests. Anti-narcotics police chief Gen. Gustavo Socha blamed the
criticism on ``drug traffickers'' spreading disinformation.

Any scaleback in forced eradication would likely put the government at
odds with Washington, whose number one priority in Colombia is the drug
war. Colombia is the world's leading cocaine exporting nation and a
major supplier of heroin to the United States.

U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson on Wednesday reaffirmed aerial
eradication as a ``key'' to its aid program. The embassy has
commissioned a study it believes will refute claims that the spraying is
causing respiratory and skin ailments among farmers and their families.

The U.S. Congress last week began consideration of an $882 million
follow-up aid package floated by the Bush administration for Colombia
and its Andean neighbors. Concerns about fumigation - and the military's
human rights record - are expected to arise.

A leading conservation group, World Wildlife Fund, sent a letter to
members of Congress last week warning that fumigation threatens
Colombia's biodiversity and urging a moratorium ``at least until an
adequate environmental impact study has been conducted.''

The latest controversy follows what U.S. officials are calling a
successful start to the eradication push, which began late last year in
Putumayo, the largest coca-growing province.

Since January, according to official figures released here this week,
spraying has done away with 128,000 acres of coca - more than one-third
of the amount U.S. officials estimated was growing in Colombia at the
end of last year. Gonzalo de Francisco, the government's point man for
Putumayo, said he has also signed up more than 40,000 peasant families
in agreements to manually eradicate their coca in return for aid to grow
legal crops.