SPRAYING PROMPTS EXAGGERATED TALES

Officials Deny Farmers' Assertion That Drive Does Harm Far Afield

LARANDIA, Colombia -- A visit to the area of Colombia where spraying is
taking place against coca cultivations can prompt exaggerated tales about
the effect of the operations.

Coca farmers pointed at every dead bush and tree as a victim of glyphosate,
including one tree obviously dead for years and a 200-foot ceiba tree.

"Impossible. The small amount of glyphosate we use cannot kill even
medium-sized trees," said Luis Parra, a Colombian forestry engineer who
first proved in 1992 that the herbicide was effective in eradicating coca
bushes.

The spray had clearly killed patches of food crops planted within larger
coca fields. And there were signs of the agricultural version of collateral
damage -- withered sections of legal fields adjoining coca fields, for example.

But there were also signs of significant spraying mistakes -- a vast and
yellowed cow pasture near no visible coca, a three-acre plot of wilting
corn at least 300 feet from the nearest coca bush.

The coca farmers complained that the glyphosate had given their children
severe stomach pains, bouts of vomiting, fevers and boils all over their
bodies and had killed cows, dogs, chickens and fish.

One doctor in the Putumayo town of La Hormiga reported treating six people
with "the symptoms of glyphosate poisoning," but he later acknowledged he
had never read any scientific reports on what those symptoms are.

U.S. officials dismiss the charges as lies. "As their illegal lives have
been affected by the spraying, these persons do not give objective
information," said a recent State Department report to Congress.

The spray program's computerized tracking system allowed its analysts to
quickly dismiss at least half of the 100 or so complaints of wrongful
spraying filed by farmers during the Putumayo campaign, Colombian officials
said.

"Show me a dead cat, a dog, a pig, anything. They say the animals are
dying, but they never show the bodies," said army Gen. Mario Montoya,
commander of a huge swath of Putumayo and neighboring Caqueta. Police Gen.
Gustavo Socha, head of the counter-narcotics division, announced plans
recently to establish two new aerial eradication bases with the nine new
crop dusters bought with $115 million in U.S. aid.

The added planes, glyphosate and aviation gasoline will allow the program
to spray up to 197,600 acres of coca this year, compared to 143,440 acres
last year, Socha said.