U.S. BACKED DRUG WAR OFF TO STRONG START

Problems await, though, despite the initial success of anti-drug offensive
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 to jungle camps
near the war zone 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 U.S. military official, who spoke on condition that he not be
further identified. 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
into major action.

But 70 percent of the coca fumigated so far in Putumayo was not under
control of the FARC, but of a right-wing paramilitary group, the U.S.
military official said.

The paramilitary group, which also "taxes" the coca industry, is unlikely to
fight the army because it often maintains covert alliances with army
officers.

Gonzalo de Francisco, Pastrana's point man for Putumayo, agreed that when
the U.S.-trained army troops move into guerrilla strongholds, fighting will
intensify.

"The FARC has been there for five years," he said. "They will resist."

It's the goal of the U.S. and Colombia that the increased spray operations
will eventually outpace the planters' ability to move to new areas.