COLOMBIAN ACTIVISTS PRESS COAL GIANT'S RIGHTS RECORD

Protests Come as Congress Considers More Aid with Fewer Strings Attached

U.S. companies doing business in Colombia are contributing to that
country's political and economic hardships, even as Congress seeks to
increase aid to the South American country, according to Colombian activist
Ligia Ines Alzate.

Alzate told a gathering Monday in Mobile that companies such as Alabama
coal giant Drummond Co. Inc. have caused further strife in a country so
war-torn that women head more than half of all households.

"We are the widows, the mothers, the sisters of the armed combatants,"
Alzate, an elementary school principal and activist for women's rights and
unions, said through a translator.

Lawyers for the United Mine Workers of America and the International Labor
Rights Fund filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Drummond last month in
federal court in Birmingham. The lawsuit alleges the company paid
paramilitary groups to torture and murder three leaders of the union that
represents workers at Drummond's Colombian mines.

Those allegations and U.S. foreign policy will dom inate a four-day
"mobilization" by human rights demonstrators -- including a pair of nuns
from Mobile -- this weekend in Washington, D.C. The protests come as
Colombian President Andres Pastrana and President Bush ask Congress for
more anti-narcotics aid to Colombia, a notion loathe to some, including
U.S. Rep. Sonny Callahan, R-Mobile.

A Mobile Register interview request left Tuesday with a secretary for Mike
Tracy, a Drummond vice president in Birmingham, went unacknowledged.

Instead, the company issued a statement denying the allegations in the
lawsuit and questioning the motives of the groups filing it. The
International Labor Rights Fund, the statement noted, has made similar
allegations against and sued other corporations, including The Coca-Cola
Company, Exxon Mobil Corp. and Del Monte Foods.

Drummond's statement also accused the United Mine Workers of America, which
has a contract with the company and has criticized its Colombian
operations, of seeking "to destroy the jobs of the Colombian worker."

Drummond has shut down several coal mines in northern Alabama in recent
years as it has expanded its operations in Colombia. Last year, the company
imported 7 million tons of coal through the McDuffie Island Bulk Terminal
at the Alabama State Docks in Mobile. The bulk of that coal feeds Alabama
Power Co.'s Barry Steam Plant in north Mobile County.

Drummond has lobbied in the past for billions in U.S. aid to protect
American investments in Colombia, appropriations that Callahan has
supported. But last week, during a House appropriations subcommittee
hearing, Callahan said that money seems to have gone for naught and
compared U.S. involvement in Colombia to that in Haiti and the Middle East.

"We have provided Colombia with more money than any other nation in this
hemisphere," Callahan said. "Now, we're proposing another half a billion
dollars toward that effort to resolve a problem that really ... is our own
problem, because we keep buying these drugs and creating the market."

The Bush administration has identified Colombia's three major guerrilla
groups as terrorist organizations, an increasingly common criterion in
requests for federal dollars since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New
York and Washington. Bush's plan also would ease restrictions attached to
the billions of dollars already committed to fight Colombian drug
traffickers, requirements that limit U.S. military involvement and mandate
human rights monitoring.

The vast majority of the more than 200 kidnappings and killings of union
members worldwide in 2000 took place in Colombia, according to a U.S. State
Department report. Colombia's decades-long infighting has claimed tens of
thousands of lives, with a sharp increase in violence since the U.S.
government stepped up its involvement about 12 years ago, said Sandra
Alvarez, who translated for Alzate.

Alvarez's California-based nonprofit group, Global Exchange, sponsored
Alzate's appearance at Mobile Gas Service Corp.'s auditorium in conjunction
with The Quest for Social Justice, a recently formed interfaith group in
Mobile that emphasizes civic action. Two Quest members and Sisters of
Mercy, Magdala Thompson and Marilyn Graf, left Tuesday for the
demonstration in Washington.

Alzate spoke Tuesday in Montgomery and plans an appearance in Birmingham
today. She will not be meeting with Drummond officials, organizers said.
Drummond, regularly listed in Forbes Magazine as one of the 500 largest
private companies in the country, has real estate developments in
California and Florida. It also owns the 2,500-acre Liberty Park
residential development in Birmingham and still operates the Shoal Creek
Mine in Jefferson County.