HERBICIDE USED AGAINST COCA CROPS

SANTA ANA, Colombia - Trained and financed substantially by the United
States, the Colombian army has begun an aggressive land and air
assault on the country's coca-growing heartland, claiming to have
stripped a quarter of all coca crops in the past six weeks.

Low-flying aerial spray planes - protected from ground fire by two
elite battalions that are dropped into coca fields - have blanketed
Caqueta and Putumayo provinces, spraying herbicide over 65,785 acres
as of Tuesday, according to newly released military estimates.

Although aerial defoliation of coca has been used across Colombia for
10 years, government officials say this is the first serious effort in
this rebel-infested region.

The defoliation effort is a centerpiece of President Andres Pastrana's
ambitious Plan Colombia, a multibillion-dollar effort designed to cut
Colombia's coca crop in half by 2005 and, with it, a crucial revenue
source for leftist guerrillas.

The United States has pledged $1.1 billion in that effort, most of it
in the form of transport helicopters and training for anti-narcotics
troops, whose role is to protect spray planes and destroy
coca-processing labs in the jungle.

The aerial eradication, however, has not come without a price. Farmers
in the Valley of Guamuez in northwestern Putumayo, a swath containing
the largest concentration of coca, have complained that legal crops
like plantains and yucca were destroyed along with coca.

"I have the proof to show that it wasn't just the coca farmers who
have suffered," said Carlos Alberto Palacios, secretary of human
development in the town of La Hormiga.

"We believe people will go hungry," said Palacios, an expert on the
coca trade. "They've fumigated everything, fields and plantain rows
and yucca and everything that people need to live on."

On a half hour helicopter flight with Gen. Mario Montoya over what was
once Colombia's most bountiful coca-producing region, fields that once
were bright green with coca and other plants were now a pale brown,
wiped free of vegetation for miles around.

"This is the only way," the general said, taking a look through the
window of the chopper. "We don't have another way."

Montoya, who is in charge of the effort, said as many as 250,000 acres
in the two provinces were dedicated to coca before spraying began on
Dec. 19, a figure higher than last January's estimate of 185,000.

The two provinces, a tropical swath of jungles and fields conducive to
coca farming, are believed to contain three-quarters of Colombia's
coca, the leaves of which are used to make cocaine.

U.S. officials, who provide Colombian authorities with satellite maps
that help pinpoint coca fields, confirmed Montoya's
assessments.

U.S. officials also said the spraying using glyphosate - a powerful
chemical used in many pesticides - is at least 90 percent effective
during first-time use, wiping out fields within a few weeks.

Palacios, the coca trade expert, and other town officials said farmers
did cultivate coca, but also a host of legal crops, as well as raise
cattle and other livestock.

The health department of Putumayo is in the process of collecting
testimony from farmers whose lands were sprayed, said Nancy Sanchez,
who is supervising the effort as coordinator of the department's human
rights section.

"There's complaints about intoxication, diarrhea, vomiting, skin
rashes, red eyes, headaches," said Sanchez.

"In the children, above all, there are ill effects on their
skin."

U.S. officials have insisted that tests on glyphosate have
demonstrated that the pesticide cannot cause harm to humans or animals.

The government, which is concerned about how aerial spraying will be
viewed overseas by potential financial backers, points out that the
farmers whose fields were sprayed had opportunity to sign pacts that
would have prevented aerial eradication.

Under a program that already has 2,000 signatories across Putumayo,
the farmers in Valley of Guamuez could have agreed to yank their coca
plants in return for up to $1,000 worth of livestock and food.

"The people from this zone had not shown up," said Pastrana's point
man on Putumayo, referring to the farmers in the Valley of Guamuez.

The official, Gonzalo de Francisco, added: "These people can't be
angry with the fumigation. They were doing something outside legal
norms." Montoya said that some legal crops were fumigated: "We know
that we can make mistakes, but the mistakes are minimal compared to
the magnitude of the operation."

Fumigating some legal crops was hard to avoid because coca farmers
tend to hide their crops by planting next to larger, legal crops, like
banana trees, he said.