COLOMBIA SEEKS U.S. TRADE BREAKS

QUEBEC (AP) -- Declaring that free trade can help fight drug trafficking, a
group of Latin American heads of state urged President Bush on Friday to
grant wider trade concessions, saying current anti-drug strategies have
produced few results.

Assembled at the Summit of the Americas, the presidents of Colombia, Peru,
Bolivia and Ecuador told Bush in a letter that their countries have made
sacrifices to stem the flow of drugs to the United States and beyond, and
that it was time for Washington to provide more investments and open its
markets to products from the region.

"Today the scourge of drugs is still amongst us -- despite the unremitting
efforts of the Andean countries in their struggle against illicit drugs,"
said the letter, which was given to Bush during a meeting he held with
Andean heads of state.

Washington already is giving Colombia $1.3 billion in mostly military aid
to help it combat drugs. But Bush assured the leaders he is prepared to do
more to help drug-producing nations including Colombia.

"We've got plans for all the countries in the region," Bush said as he
started a meeting with Colombian President Andres Pastrana and the
presidents of Panama, Ecuador and Venezuela and the prime minister of Peru.
The meeting was delayed 20 minutes while Bush waited for the Brazilian and
Bolivian presidents to arrive. U.S. officials said Bolivian President Hugo
Banzer Suarez and Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso were held
up at the city's perimeter, which security shut down due to protests.

"We spent a lot of time talking about drugs and drug trafficking," Bush
said after the meeting. "And I assured them I understood that our nation
must do a better job of reducing demand."

The Andean country leaders want the United States to renew the Andean Trade
Preferences Act, which expires in December and exempts Andean exports
including flowers, minerals and oil from U.S. duties. They also want the
exemption expanded to other products including textiles, and to bring
Venezuela into the pact.

Lower trade barriers would help provide an alternative means of earning a
living to Colombians involved in the drug trade, Pastrana said.

"The best way to eradicate drugs is investing in our people, pulling them
from illegal activities," Pastrana told reporters as he toured the summit site.

Colombia is confronted by a problem so enormous -- with billions of dollars
in drug-trafficking proceeds fueling the nation's 37-year civil war -- that
a military-style coca eradication offensive, supported by Washington, is
insufficient, Pastrana said.

Currently, U.S. Green Berets are training a Colombian army counternarcotics
battalion at a base near southern Colombia's war zone. Two other battalions
have already been trained and are protecting U.S.-supplied crop dusters as
they fumigate vast coca plantations in Colombia.

Leftist rebels and a rival right-wing paramilitary group "tax" coca
producers and protect their plantations.

"We are fighting the biggest criminal organizations in humanity," Pastrana
said. "We need support from everyone."

However, opposition to the initiative remains. Before the summit, a group
of prominent Latin Americans wrote a letter to Bush expressing their
concern "that current policy will cause more harm than good in Colombia and
the region at large -- while having little or no effect on the drug
problems of the consumer countries."

Signatories included Guatemalan Nobel Laureate Rigoberta Menchu, former
President of Bolivia Lydia Gueiler Tejada, former Colombian Foreign
Minister Rodrigo Pardo and Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano.