COCAINE CULTIVATION INCREASING IN COLOMBIA

WASHINGTON - Despite U.S. money and military aid, cocaine production
in Colombia has increased, fueled by strong demand from American and,
increasingly, European drug users, a U.S. government report said yesterday.

While coca leaf crops in Peru and Bolivia, original sources of the
drug, were reduced to new lows last year, cultivation of the Andean
shrub continues to expand in Colombia, protected by Marxist
guerrillas, the annual State Department report said.

Colombian coca plantations grew by 11 percent to 336,000 acres of
high-yielding leaf - enough to produce 580 tons of cocaine, double
Colombia's potential just five years ago, it said.

The 2000 report on drug-producing nations backed up the Bush
administration's decision to approve the anti-drug efforts of
Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, as well as of transit countries Brazil,
Ecuador, Panama, Paraguay, Venezuela and Mexico.

Poverty-stricken Haiti, powerless to stop smuggling, received a
waiver. The Communist government of Cuba, located in the direct path
of cocaine flowing to the United States, won praise for sharing
information on drug trafficking with U.S. agencies.

The report did not take into account the 61,800 acres destroyed by
herbicide since the beginning of the year in a U.S.-backed
military-police drive into rebel-controlled southern Colombia.

The United States last year committed $1.3 billion to fight cocaine
and heroin in Colombia, mainly by bolstering the army to break the
"narco-guerrilla" alliance.

The U.S. report said coca crops in a rebel-run area, where the
Colombian government withdrew troops as part of peace talks, increased
by 33 percent to 19,500 acres last year.

Crop dusters protected by U.S. helicopters have so far sprayed coca
crops in Putumayo province, a bastion of the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia (FARC), the country's largest leftist insurgency
that took up arms 37 years ago.

But the State Department said it detected new coca crops in the
northern provinces of Bolivar and Norte de Santander, where guerrillas
of the smaller National Liberation Army (ELN) hold sway.

This points to a "balloon effect" of the U.S.-backed anti-drug
offensive, driving narcotics output to other parts of Colombia, the
world's largest producer of cocaine, and spilling over into
neighboring countries.

To counter the "balloon effect," the Bush administration will widen
Plan Colombia to provide more anti-drug funds to neighboring countries
when it announces detailed budget figures in April, an official said.

Despite political upheaval caused by the downfall of former president
Alberto Fujimori last year, Peru continued to reduce its coca crops,
the report said.

But the price of the leaf remains high and some abandoned plantations
were revived by peasants, while Peru's increased opium poppy fields
has U.S. authorities worried.

The United States remains the world's largest single market for
cocaine, with an average 300 tons of the white powder entering the
country every year.

But the U.S. report said cocaine use has fallen sharply among
Americans in the last decade and half, and drug barons are
increasingly looking elsewhere for new customers, mainly in Europe.

Easy transport and communications and the abolition of national border
controls has turned the European Union into "the best prospect for
increasing cocaine consumption," the State Department report said.

"Throughout Europe, cocaine seems to have the prestige and allure of
danger, thrills and enhanced endurance that attracted American
athletes, media stars and Wall Street traders to the drug in the
1980s," it said.