U.S., COLOMBIA AT ODDS ON DRUG WAR SUCCESS

BOGOTA, Colombia - Washington's war on cocaine in Colombia has spawned
another fight - over statistics indicating whether it's working.

Colombian officials said Thursday that they were prepared to defend new
figures reporting dramatic reductions in the cultivation of coca - the
plant used to make cocaine - against upcoming U.S. estimates that are
expected to show just the opposite.

"I don't think they are in a position to refute our figures, not
scientifically or technically," Justice Minister Romulo Gonzalez said,
referring to the CIA, whose annual crop estimates are expected within days.

Colombian government drug czar Gabriel Merchan challenged the CIA's method
for calculating Colombia's coca crop. He said the intelligence agency's
projections, based on satellite images of a sample of traditional growing
areas, is "work half-done."

Anya Guilsher, a CIA spokeswoman contacted in Langley, Va., said she could
not comment on the agency's figures until they are released. But, she said,
the CIA stands by its methodology.

This year's coca count has big repercussions, with U.S. and Colombian
officials facing pressure to show results from an anti-drug war being
financed with hundreds of millions of dollars of U.S. aid.

The Colombian government released data Wednesday reporting the first
reductions in Colombia's coca crop since cultivation began booming a decade
ago.

Colombia's total coca acreage has shrunk by as much as 16.8 percent in the
last 16 months, to 336,000 acres, down from 402,000 acres at the end of
August 2000, the government said.

U.S. and U.N. officials say they expect the CIA to show a large increase in
last year's coca crop - possibly by as much as a third.