COLOMBIA COULD BAN U.S. SPRAYING

Farmers, Activists Say Anti-Drug Effort Harmful To Citizens, Legal Crops

BUESACO, Colombia ­ With the fate of Washington's flagship anti-drug
program hanging in the balance, a Colombian court is days away from
deciding whether to ban the spraying of a U.S.-manufactured herbicide used
to eradicate illicit drug crops.

The ruling by a judicial tribunal awaits only the submission of an
environmental study due this month. Officials acknowledge the decision
could force the United States and Colombia to halt the use of glyphosate,
the only chemical herbicide approved for aerial eradication of drug crops
here. Colombia is by far the largest supplier of the heroin and cocaine
consumed in the United States. A ban on glyphosate, known by its U.S. brand
name Roundup, would bring a large part of Washington's $2 billion anti-drug
effort to a screeching halt and reverse progress in a 5-year-old effort to
end the cultivation of plants that provide the base ingredients for cocaine
and heroin.

But in Buesaco and hundreds of other towns across Colombia, peasant farmers
have grown increasingly vocal in protesting the herbicide's use, charging
that American-piloted crop dusters have mistakenly wiped out their legal
crops and that glyphosate poses serious health risks to humans and farm
animals. Their complaints coincide with efforts by constitutional and
environmental activists to halt what they call the wanton destruction of
the Colombian countryside with glyphosate.

The ban on glyphosate is pending before the Superior Administrative Court
tribunal in Cundinamarca state, north of Bogota. In addition, the federal
Constitutional Court in Bogota last April ordered the government to
restrict herbicide spraying over Indian reservations, which compose about
28 percent of Colombian territory.

Farmers' lawsuit Buesaco farmers, like others across the country, have
filed their own lawsuit against the government that demands payment for
losses they say they have suffered from glyphosate.

"The government claims that glyphosate doesn't harm human health or the
environment. We know this is not true," said Jose Maria Moncayo, the mayor
of Buesaco, in southwestern Colombia. "Our children started vomiting and
developed skin rashes as soon as the spraying began. Our cattle developed
respiratory infections, then started dying."

Such claims have been made in Buesaco and other towns for years, and
studies commissioned by the State Department have dismissed the health
problems, in almost all cases, as unrelated to the spraying. Both
governments insist the herbicide is safe.

President Alvaro Uribe's administration has pledged to fight any court
decision restricting glyphosate. But top officials acknowledge they are
worried about the spate of cases.

They say the Cundinamarca tribunal's ruling is only the first of many
expected challenges coinciding with new results showing that the
eradication campaign has killed up to 25 percent of the country's known
illicit drug crops. "The traffickers are feeling this is for real and that
things are going to change for the worse very, very quickly. They're going
to resort to any type of means to defeat this policy and to challenge it,"
said Colombian Vice President Francisco Santos.

"They're going to use the legal system, they're going to use violence and
they're going to use corruption," he added. "We're confronting an industry,
a huge criminal industry. They don't play games. We have to take these
challenges seriously."

Claudia Sampedro, a constitutional law professor who filed the Cundinamarca
lawsuit, said she was motivated solely by a desire to see Colombian law
applied appropriately.

Ms. Sampedro said the government has failed on two counts: Although it
insists that glyphosate is safe, the required environmental-impact studies
on file are from U.S. State Department and Environmental Protection Agency
studies, which are not necessarily valid under Colombian law. She added
that U.S. credibility should be questioned, given the high political stakes
and the recent controversy over U.S. claims about Iraqi weapons of mass
destruction.

Environmental concerns Ms. Sampedro and other opponents also argue that the
government is using a significantly more powerful mix of glyphosate and
other chemicals whose environmental record is not demonstrably safe.

"The law requires the completion of a Colombian environmental-impact study.
It is the requirement whenever you undertake any kind of activity that
could affect the environment, whether it is herbicide spraying or building
a house or a gas station or an airport," she said. "This entire case exists
because they initiated spraying with glyphosate without carrying out the
required environmental studies."

Ms. Sampedro also argued that the technology for spraying glyphosate, using
U.S.-piloted crop-dusting planes, is nowhere near as accurate as the U.S.
and Colombian governments say..

"They would have us believe that each molecule of glyphosate is
individually intelligent, so that, after it is released from the plane, it
thinks, 'I am only going to fall on a coca plant,' " ignoring all plots of
legally cultivated farmland nearby, she said.

"Oh, please. Are they trying to suggest that this chemical only kills
illicit plants, and that not a single yucca or corn or plantain plant is
harmed? They treat us as if we were stupid."

Although the Cundinamarca court ordered the suspension of spraying, the
ruling must await an appeals process and review of an environmental study
now being completed.

Determined to spray Mr. Santos said the government would abide by the final
decision, although it would search for any possible legal means to continue
spraying ­ including introducing a constitutional amendment allowing the
government to eradicate with herbicides anywhere illicit drug crops are
growing. He said anyone who thinks he can avoid eradication by
intermingling illicit crops with legal crops is sorely mistaken.

"Tough luck. He is using his land to poison Colombia, to destroy the land
and to poison American, Colombian, Brazilian and European kids," the vice
president said.

He said Ms. Sampedro and others may well force the suspension of spraying.
The result, he warned, will be a sudden surge in bloodshed as Colombian
troops fight back the insurgents protecting the drug trade. "Oh, fine.
We'll have a great environment but with dead bodies all over," Mr. Santos
said. "We'll have a great environment but nobody left to live in it."
Claims of inaccuracy Many peasant farmers in Buesaco, a mountain community
surrounded by peaks where opium poppy flourishes, said they support ending
the drug trade but complained that the spraying has at times been wildly
inaccurate. "I live in a low, dry area where opium cannot grow. The closest
illicit crops are eight kilometers [4.8 miles] away," said Segundo Ballardo
Benavides, from the nearby village of Las Minas. When crop-dusting planes
swooped down over his farm last November, he said, the herbicide killed
everything: corn stalks, beans, coffee trees.

Other farmers showed a videotape of spraying near Buesaco in April in which
a plane swoops low over a hillside and releases herbicide. A strong gust of
wind hits the herbicide upon release, dispersing it widely and carrying it
far from its intended drop point.

Teodoro Campo, the chief of the National Police, said glyphosate has been
in use for 20 years in Colombia.

The computer and satellite technology provided by the United States to
guide the crop-dusting planes is said to ensure a very high rate of
accuracy. "Yes, it's very possible that, with wind, the [accuracy] of the
spraying could be affected," he said. "But if the drug traffickers think
they can thwart us by putting, say, a coffee plantation here and here, and
put a coca plantation in between so that we won't spray it, they are wrong.
We will spray, and yes, that coffee will suffer."