COLOMBIAN GOVERNORS PROTEST CROP SPRAYING

Bush administration officials held an elaborate press briefing yesterday to
tout the interim success of U.S.-funded efforts to eliminate drug crops and
boost development in southern Colombia, even as four Colombian politicians
from the targeted region were touring Washington to criticize the programs.

The elected governors from the four southern Colombian states most affected
by the aerial spraying of herbicide on fields of coca and opium poppy
charged that as much as half of an estimated 70,000 acres of crops
destroyed since late December were legal food crops.

"I speak for the campesinos, the small farmers," Ivan Gerardo Guerrero, of
the southernmost state of Putumayo, said in an interview. "They are hurting
people." At the same time, Guerrero said, the promised development aid has
been slow in coming for those small farmers outside the herbicide-spraying
area who have agreed to voluntary eradication.

The U.S. officials, who appeared to have timed their briefing at least in
part to offset the governors' visit this week, said Guerrero was mistaken.
"Neither the governor of Putumayo nor anyone else in his government or this
government has a good fix on what the actual kill ratio has been," said
William Brownfield, deputy assistant secretary of state for Western
Hemisphere affairs.

James Mack, deputy assistant secretary for international narcotics and law
and anti-crime enforcement affairs, said the true figures will not be known
until aerial photographs of the region have been analyzed, along with
"ground-truthing" inspections by Colombian central government officials.
Also present at yesterday's briefing, held at the State Department, were
Paul Vaky, of the Justice Department's Criminal Division, and George
Wachtenheim, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development program
in Colombia.

The governors, from the states of Cauca, Tolima and Narino, in addition to
Putumayo, are in Washington under the auspices of the Latin America Working
Group, a coalition of U.S. religious, human rights and development
organizations, which oppose elements of U.S. policy on Colombia. They plan
to meet with U.S. government representatives and members of Congress.

"We agree with the [Colombian] government," said Floro Alberto Tunubala of
Cauca, the first Colombian Indian elected to state office. "We are against
illegal crops. The question is how to get rid of it." The governors, who
complained that they were never consulted by President Andres Pastrana's
government on the U.S.-backed anti-drug program, have proposed an end to
crop spraying and increased involvement of local communities in widespread
manual eradication and social development programs.

"We're not only making condemnations, we have proposals," Tunubala said.

The governors said that promised new security assistance from the Colombian
military and police has been slow to materialize and that they were at the
mercy of warring leftist guerrillas and right-wing paramilitary forces. In
the absence of a government security presence, the guerrillas and
paramilitary troops maintain armed control over most of the drug-growing
territory in southern Colombia.