U.S.-BACKED COUNTERDRUG PUSH HITS POLITICAL SNAGS IN COLOMBIA

BOGOTA, Colombia

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.