AS DRUG WAR TAKES ITS TOLL, COLOMBIA SEEKS MORE U.S. AID

LA CONCORDIA, Colombia -- School wasn't in session the day the crop-dusters
bolted out of the morning sky.

But the coca the United States is paying Colombia more than $1 billion to
wipe out grows right up to the edge of the schoolyard. It surrounds the
homes and fills a large field behind the church. It lines the roads and
blankets the rolling hills as far as the eye can see.

The hillsides -- and the school's soccer field -- are dead brown now, a
stark contrast to the vivid greens of the nearby tropical forest.

"The effects of the fumigation here have been catastrophic," said Miriam
Teresa Rodriguez, a teacher at La Concordia's 150-student primary school.
"The spraying killed the coca, but it killed the food crops, too."

As President Andres Pastrana meets in Washington today with President Bush,
his ambitious program to break the back of the Colombian cocaine trade --
and deprive leftist rebels of drug income -- has kicked into high gear.

U.S. and Colombian officials are proclaiming the program's first punch, a
massive aerial fumigation assault, a success so far, with more than 70,000
acres of coca destroyed.

After securing a $1.3 billion commitment last year from the Clinton
administration, Pastrana will ask Bush for trade preferences aimed at
kick-starting Colombia's faltering economy. Supporters say economic
development could help improve conditions in Colombia and provide a healthy
alternative to coca crops and drug trafficking.

Pastrana's program, called Plan Colombia, has won strong support in
Congress, where backers believe it will slow the flow of cocaine into the
United States while choking off a lucrative resource for Colombia's leftist
rebels, who earn millions taxing coca farmers and drug traffickers.

But Plan Colombia has plenty of critics, too.

The European Parliament has raised concerns over the environmental effects
of the spraying, as well as the messy record of human rights violations by
Colombia's military and right-wing paramilitary groups, which reportedly
work closely with the army.

And others worry that the United States might be stumbling into a deeper
involvement in Colombia's nasty 37-year-old civil war. U.S. contractors
helping the aerial spraying missions have already come under rebel fire
during fumigation flights.

Critics also fear the conflict over the drug trade will spread to
Colombia's neighbors, creating regional instability.

Colombia supplies 80 percent to 90 percent of the world's cocaine, with
much of the raw ingredient -- coca -- grown in a jungle-covered swath of
territory along its southern border.

In the past two years, a few hundred U.S. military advisers have trained
two special anti-narcotics battalions of Colombia's military, and are now
supplying satellite maps to target fields for fumigation. A shipment of
U.S. Blackhawk helicopters scheduled to arrive this year will provide more
security for the small fumigation planes, which have been harried by ground
fire.

But Plan Colombia's strongest critics come from within Colombia itself,
especially the province of Putumayo.

Fumigation has destroyed the rural economy, local leaders say, while the
government has so far failed to deliver significant emergency aid or
extensive alternative development programs.

"Two months after the fumigation, the national government has done nothing
to help the peasants," said Alfonso Martinez, former mayor of La Hormiga, a
small commercial hub in the Guamuez River valley near La Concordia. "The
peasants grow coca because there is no other way to make a living. Now they
have nothing to eat because the spraying has destroyed their food crops as
well as their coca."

La Hormiga officials have taken 800 complaints from peasants since the
spraying began in late December. Along with food crops, the fumigation has
been blamed for the deaths of cattle, pigs, chicken and fish. They also
claim it has sickened children and adults with skin rashes and lung problems.

Rigoberto Rosero, a peasant whose 5 acres of coca border the La Concordia
school, said he has been trying to get out of the coca business, raising
other crops and pooling resources with neighbors to grow guinea pigs, which
are sold for food here.

"Everything was killed," he said. "My bananas, sugar cane, corn and 80
guinea pigs," he said. "My son has been ill with asthma and skin rashes,
and I've spent the money I saved for a new house on his medical treatment.
I've been trying to raise other crops, and I would've signed up to cut down
my own coca, but they never gave me the chance."

Colombian officials insist local governments were given the chance to sign
up for voluntary eradication programs that would have exempted them from
fumigation. An example is Puerto Asis, about 30 miles from La Hormiga,
where there has been no spraying because hundreds of peasants promised to
cut down their coca in exchange for about $1,000 each.

Officials also say the herbicide being used -- Roundup -- isn't harmful to
humans, although labels on the product in the United States warn against
user contact. They also insist the planes target "industrial crops" --
plantations raised under contract to the rebels.

"What was fumigated was where there were zones of industrial crops," said
Gonzalo de Francisco, head of Plan Colombia's social programs. "These
people are angry because their coca was destroyed. Maybe some of them
thought they would never be sprayed."

Francisco admitted some food crops have been destroyed, but said the
peasants can seek reimbursement through the official complaint system. He
said that if aid has been slow to reach the villages, it's because the
effort is so massive.

"We're setting up a social program that is unprecedented in Colombia," he
said. "But we really believe it will solve the problem."

That confidence isn't shared in coca country.

Luis Carlos Gonzalez is head of a tribe of Cofan Indians who live near La
Concordia. The group says it raised only a small patch of coca, but watched
in disbelief as herbicide sprayed on nearby fields spread over their
chicken barn and fish pond, both financed by the Colombian government.

"We had 180 chickens and 1,400 fish die," Gonzalez said. "It's a crazy
government that could do this. We're all living off bananas and fish caught
from the river now. Let the government come here so we can tell them we
aren't cockroaches to be fumigated."