DRUG WAR STARTS STRONG IN COLOMBIA

BOGOTA, Colombia -- U.S.-trained army troops are sweeping through the
world's top cocaine-producing region, protecting crop-dusters from enemy
fire as they wipe out coca crops at an astonishing pace.

But the initial success of the anti-drug offensive -- heavily supported by
the United States and criticized by European nations -- cannot be sustained
indefinitely, acknowledged a senior U.S. military official based in Colombia.

Washington's gamble that it can win the drug war with military power
includes the deployment of U.S. special forces as trainers and the delivery
of dozens of combat helicopters.

So far, the results of the counterdrug operations in southern Putumayo
state, the world's largest cocaine-producing region, have been beyond most
anyone's expectations.

In the past month, 62,000 acres of coca have been fumigated in Putumayo,
said the official. That acreage is at least one-third of the coca crop
believed to exist in Putumayo, and more than half the coca that was
fumigated across all of Colombia in 1999.

But the pace will be virtually impossible to maintain, the U.S. official
said, partly because of expected "hostile fire" and logistics in the remote
Amazonian region.

The country's largest rebel group -- the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia, or FARC -- earns huge profits by protecting coca crops and taxing
the growers. Rebel threats to resist the offensive haven't yet materialized.

However, 70 percent of the coca fumigated so far in Putumayo was under the
control of a right-wing paramilitary group, not FARC.

The paramilitary group is unlikely to fight the army because it often
maintains covert alliances with army officers. Gonzalo de Francisco, an
official in Putumayo, agreed that when the U.S.-trained army troops move
into guerrilla strongholds, fighting will intensify.