COLOMBIA DRUG WAR GAINS DISPUTED

Latin America: Officials Report A Drop In Coca Crop Acreage, While The CIA
Says The Figure Rose Again Last Year.

BOGOTA, Colombia -- The amount of cocaine being produced in Colombia
dropped significantly last year, anti-narcotics officials announced
Thursday, making a controversial claim to success in the joint
U.S.-Colombia drug war.

An aggressive U.S.-backed fumigation program resulted in the elimination of
about 46,000 acres of coca plants, the source of cocaine, according to a
detailed satellite analysis performed under U.N. and Colombian auspices.
That would be an 11% decline.

Stepped-up attacks against drug-processing labs and programs with local
farmers to uproot coca crops cut by a third the country's annual production
of nearly 640 tons of cocaine, the officials estimated. "The reduction in
the areas under cultivation is a clear demonstration of the success of the
eradication program," Justice Minister Romulo Gonzalez said in a meeting
with reporters here Thursday.

The Colombian police numbers are backed up by a State Department analysis
that found that coca cultivation peaked in Colombia around 1997, at nearly
500,000 acres.

The numbers have been declining since then but dropped sharply last year as
the spraying program wiped out about 191,000 acres of the plants, mostly in
Putumayo and Caqueta, in southern Colombia.

Coca growers replanted many of those crops, leading to a net reduction of
about 74,000 acres. A third analysis, by the U.S. Army, found the spraying
highly effective, destroying most of the coca crops in fumigated areas.

"We have confidence in Colombia National Police figures that indicate that
there has been a net reduction in coca acreage in Colombia," said a U.S.
government official involved in the eradication program.

But a CIA analysis, expected to be released today, will show the opposite
of the Colombian figures, sources said: a massive increase in the amount of
coca cultivated between 2000 and 2001.

The CIA numbers are expected to show that Colombia's coca growth jumped for
the seventh straight time, from 336,000 acres in 2000 to 417,000 acres in
2001--enough to produce 800 tons of cocaine.

Colombian drug officials dismissed the reports of the increase and said
they were prepared to defend their estimates.

"Our figures correspond to the truth," Gonzalez said.

The new numbers are likely to continue a controversy over the White House's
drug policy in Colombia, which produces 90% of the cocaine consumed in the
United States.

They also offer a possible bright spot after Colombia's internal conflict
widened this month as peace talks collapsed. The government declared a
large southern swath of the country a war zone where the army had near
total control to combat leftist rebels.

For the last few years, the U.S. has pursued its eradication program
through Plan Colombia, providing nearly $2 billion to the country and
surrounding regions in an effort to halve cocaine production by 2005.

Part of that money was used to hire a private contractor, Virginia-based
DynCorp, to fly crop dusters over Colombia's vast coca fields. Colombia now
has more such planes flying more missions than at any time in its history.

The idea is that by drastically reducing the supply of drugs, the price of
cocaine on U.S. streets will soar and availability will drop, making the
drug much less attractive.

After a year of spraying, the central question is the effectiveness of the
fumigation program: How many acres of coca have been wiped out and how has
the price of cocaine changed in the U.S..

"In the end, what matters is price and availability," said a second U.S.
official with knowledge of the fumigation program.

The amount of coca fumigated in Colombia has become the subject of intense
debate.

The CIA numbers, compiled by the Crime and Narcotics Center, have long been
the standard for measuring coca growing in the Andes. But some involved in
the fumigation program worry that the numbers are skewing the debate,
saying the agency has long underestimated the amount of Colombian coca.

Thus, the perceived increases in cultivation are instead coca crops that
have long been there but are only now being discovered, critics say. The
CIA analyzes only a small portion of the country, using images from
high-resolution satellites, then projects data for the rest.

That's in contrast to the Colombian system, which analyzes satellite photos
of the entire country, though of a lower resolution. The State Department,
in turn, bases its analysis on high-resolution images taken from a plane,
then backs it up with ground visits.

"It would be very hard to believe that there has been a major increase in
coca cultivation after a full year of spraying on an unprecedented scale,"
said the first U.S. government official.

The picture is further obscured by the regional outlook. Though most of the
analyses indicate a drop in coca production in Colombia, CIA figures from
last year showed that the total amount of coca in the Andes stayed constant.

This year, there are already signs of an upturn in coca cultivation in Peru
as Colombia has cracked down.

"Fumigation can move coca growth. But it can't remove it from a whole
continent," said Adam Isacson of the Center for International Policy, a
Washington think tank.

To muddy things further, there is also conflict over the end result: prices
on the street.

Drug Enforcement Administration statistics from December show little or no
change in the street price of cocaine in major cities such as Los Angeles
and Chicago, comparing June 2000 to December 2001. In some places, the
price dropped.

But a recent study by the White House Office of National Drug Control
Policy found that nationwide, the cost for a street user to obtain a gram
of pure cocaine had risen sharply over the year, from about $175 a gram to
more than $225 a gram by mid-2000.

Even given the price increase, there are still no signs of a significant
drop in the number of people who use cocaine.

"If people need to spend more to get the same amount, they will," said
Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, a group
that favors the legalization of marijuana.