IN COLOMBIA, COCAINE TRADE THRIVES

Despite Eradication Efforts, Cultivation Surged 25% in 1998

MAGUARE, Colombia -- Under U.S. pressure, for most of this decade the
Colombian government has been sending planes to spray herbicides on the
fields of coca that flourish in areas like this. With a new, more
cooperative government in power in Bogota, last year was a banner year for
that joint effort, with a record 135,000 acres sprayed.

But 1998 also turned out to be a record year for cocaine production in
Colombia. By official estimate, land devoted to the cultivation of coca,
the plant that provides the raw material for cocaine, surged more than 25
percent and is now three times greater than in 1994.

Colombia has passed Peru and Bolivia to become both the largest grower and
processor of coca in the world.

All told, at least 72,000 hectares (180,000 acres) are now given over to
coca cultivation, according to a survey made public by Colombia's
Anti-Narcotics Police in September. An additional 5,600 hectares are used
for growing opium poppies, from which heroin is made, another illicit crop
that is booming despite the U.S.-financed spraying campaign. Such crops
were grown in only 10 of Colombia's 33 provinces five years ago, but are
now cultivated in 21, the survey estimated.

The reasons for this continuing surge are many. U.S. officials say the
success of air interdiction efforts in Peru and Bolivia has forced
traffickers to shift cultivation here.

The surge has also coincided with an intensification of Colombia's decades
old war against leftist guerrillas. The rebels earn money by selling
protection to the growers, who are then free to cultivate still more crops
without fear of interdiction.

Colombia acknowledges that more than three-quarters of all coca cultivation
is concentrated here in the provinces of Caqueta and neighboring Putumayo,
both strongholds of the country's largest rebel force, the Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia. The group operates at will across much of
southern Colombia.

At the same time, U.S. and Colombian officials have gradually come to
realize that simple economic logic has propelled the explosion of coca
production as much as the ebb and flow of the civil war.

Since the collapse of the Cali and Medellin cartels -- the two groups that
dominated the cocaine trade until their leaders were arrested or killed in
the mid-1990s -- trafficking groups too small to be regarded as cartels
have proliferated. In striving to build supply networks of their own, they
have provided credit to peasant farmers.

"You've got a much more decentralized situation with a lot more actors,
well over 100, and that has increased demand," said Bruce Bagley, a
University of Miami professor who is a leading academic expert on the drug
trade.

"They don't have the capital or the equipment to fly coca in from Peru or
Bolivia."

Colombian trafficking groups have also been experimenting with more potent
varieties of coca, said Colonel Jose Leonardo Gallego, chief of the
Anti-Narcotics Police, in an interview conducted during a flight over this
rebeldominated region.

With the help of agronomists hired for the purpose, they have imported a
type of coca native to Peru and grafted it onto the weaker species
traditionally grown here to create a powerful hybrid.

"Now you have a variety that can be harvested six to eight times a year,"
Mr. Bagley said. "So along with the expanded area under cultivation, you
get much greater productivity per plant and a higher alkaloid content,
which means much less cost in refining and a bigger bang for your buck."

Furthermore, while the United States and Colombia may agree on the extent
of the coca problem, they often diverge on solutions. The Colombian
government has long had doubts about spraying campaigns and prefers to
focus on crop substitution, but because the United States insists on
spraying -- and is willing to pick up the costs -- that approach has been
emphasized.

"To me, fumigation makes no sense," said Armando Borrero, a former national
security adviser to the Colombian government, expressing a view often heard
in official circles in Bogota. "It only forces the migration of
cultivation. "

Heroin Suspect Sent to U.S.

A suspected heroin trafficker was bundled aboard a U.S. plane in Bogota on
Sunday and became the first Colombian to be sent to the United States to
stand trial since 1991 after the Colombian Congress lifted a ban on the
practice in 1997, authorities said, Reuters reported.

Jaime Orlando Lara, arrested in Bogota a year ago, was taken by helicopter
from his jail cell to the police airport on the outskirts of the capital. A
New York federal court has requested his extradition on charges of
smuggling heroin into the United States.

Agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration arrived in Bogota on Saturday
as President Andres Pastrana and members of his cabinet met and rejected
last-minute appeals by Mr. Lara's lawyers.