COLUMBIA'S OTHER TARGETS - SUPPORTERS, FOES DEBATE THE EFFECTS OF SPRAYING

Photo captions:

Jose Isaias Escobar Armero, 74, on his coca-free farm, says aerial
fumigation has killed all of his yucca, a main food crop.

One of three cows that allegedly died from aerial fumigation of a coca-free
farm in the Colombian state of Putumayo. Indiscriminate spraying has taken
a toll on the impoverished area.

Young children near La Hormiga help harvest coca, which had been aerially
fumigated. When coca farms are sprayed, so are pastures, fish ponds, yucca
fields and fruit trees.

BOGOTA, Colombia - Harmless weed killer or Amazon-threatening poison?

As a U.S.-backed drug war escalates in Colombia, so does the debate over
glyphosate, the chemical herbicide being used in a massive aerial campaign
to eradicate coca - the leaf used to make cocaine.

Colombian President Andres Pastrana was meeting with President Bush in
Washington, D.C., last week to discuss U.S. support for drug-fighting
programs in the world's largest cocaine-producing nation. But plans to
continue fumigating are not expected to be modified - U.S. and Colombian
government officials say the herbicide is harmless to humans and the
environment.

Since spraying kicked into high gear in southern Putumayo province in
December, airplanes escorted by U.S.-provided helicopter gunships have
dumped an estimated 85,000 gallons of the herbicide glyphosate over tens of
thousands of acres of coca.

The private Clinica Marcos in La Hormiga, a main town in the fumigation
zone, has received 15 patients complaining of laryngitis and minor skin and
respiratory infections since then, said Ana Patricia Quinteros, a
physician. However, it is unclear whether the complaints are related to the
fumigation, Quinteros said.

To investigate complaints of health effects, U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson
has decided to dispatch a medical team to Putumayo.

Colombia's federal human rights ombudsman recently requested that the
spraying be halted, citing effects on food crops and evidence that farmers
who agreed to voluntarily eradicate their coca crops have had them
fumigated anyway.

"The rivers and streams where peasants get their water have been
contaminated. Plantains, yucca and sugar cane - all of it has been
damaged,'' Francisco Tenorio, the president of a Putumayo indigenous
peoples organization, said in telephone interview.

While the government insists on continuing the aerial fumigation,
environmentalists are warning of ecological damage.

"The situation is truly alarming,'' said Ricardo Vargas, an
environmentalist and author of a book on coca eradication. "Forests have
been destroyed ... birds sprayed as well as the food eaten by monkeys, in a
region with great biodiversity.''

U.S. and Colombian officials contend that glyphosate - produced in the
United States by Monsanto Co. and sold as the weed-killer Roundup - is no
more harmful than aspirin, table salt or caffeine.

A Jan. 23 U.S. State Department report to Congress noted that glyphosate
has been approved by the Environmental Protection Agency and is widely used
in fruit orchards, coffee plantations, and rice, sugar cane and cotton fields.

Vargas criticized the mixing of glyphosate with a Colombian-made mixture of
mineral oils and other elements known as Cosmo-Flux. Cosmo-Flux makes the
glyphosate heavier and stickier, helping it avoid being misdirected by the
wind when sprayed, and making it adhere better to the coca plants.

Vargas said the effects of the mixture had not been studied. But a U.S.
official said that although Cosmo-Flux is not EPA-approved, all of its
components have been approved by the U.S. agency.

U.N. officials, who have been critical of the spraying policy, are
skeptical about claims of dangerous health and environmental effects.

"Many more herbicides and insecticides are used in the planting (of coca)
than in the fumigation,'' noted Klaus Nyholm, director in Colombia of the
U.N. International Drug Control Program.

Colombia and U.S. officials stress that the environmental damage caused by
drug production itself.

Coca farmers harm the Amazonian jungles by felling virgin rainforest and
dumping thousands of tons of cocaine-processing chemicals, including
sulfuric acid and gasoline, into rivers.