COCA FARMERS STAGE PROTEST IN COLOMBIA

BOGOTA, Colombia -- Thousands of angry coca farmers and pickers occupying a
northern town yesterday said they would not leave until the government
abandons a U.S.-backed program to aerially eradicate their crops.

The protests that began Thursday in Tibu, a town near the border with
Venezuela, were the first major grass-roots demonstrations against
fumigation since President Andres Pastrana's drug-fighting plan known as
Plan Colombia got underway late last-year.

The protesters came from the countryside where coca, the crop used to make
cocaine, is grown. They want the government to manually eradicate the crops
instead of spraying, said Gonzalo Cardenas, the mayor of Tibu.

Officials said there was no violence yesterday. Over the weekend
protesters-thought to number as many as 4,000 - looted businesses, torched
the fire station and set fire to fumigation chemicals stored at the
airstrip in the town, 322 miles northeast of the capital, Bogota.

"They will stay until the government abandons the fumigation program," said
Rev. Jose Belen, of the Tibu Diocese, which has provided food and cooking
pots to the protesters.

Cardenas, Tibu's mayor, ordered a curfew in the town of 17,000. Police were
sent in to help maintain peace. Police accused right-wing paramilitaries,
who profit by taxing drug crops, of instigating the protests.