COLOMBIA CALLS FOR DRUG WAR SUMMIT

Leader Says U.S. Partly To Blame

BOGOTA, Colombia -- Frustrated by the drug war's cost in lives and dollars,
President Andres Pastrana on Thursday called for an international
conference to draw a new blueprint for the fight against illegal narcotics.

"I think the moment has arrived to evaluate the world's anti-drug
policies," the Colombian leader said. He added that everything from cocaine
and heroin consumption in the United States to the controversial policy of
aerial fumigation of drug crops in Colombia should be debated.

"We should sit down to listen and look at what has happened over the past
12 years," Pastrana said, referring to a drug summit held in Cartagena,
Colombia, in 1990. Colombians "cannot always be the ones paying the price
in the fight against narcotics trafficking."

During a 40-minute interview with foreign journalists at the national
palace in Bogota, Pastrana, whose four-year term ends next August, defended
his efforts to end Colombia's 37-year war with Marxist rebels. The
Colombian leader hinted that he will maintain a Switzerland-sized sanctuary
in the southern part of the country that he gave the rebels in 1998 to
promote peace negotiations.

Pastrana's comments came amid growing concern here that the peace process
is breaking down and that U.S.-backed efforts to wipe out drug production
are not working.

Secretary of State Colin Powell will visit Colombia next Tuesday and
Wednesday to discuss the civil war and outline the Bush administration's
plan for anti-drug and development aid for the region. Plan Colombia,
Pastrana's anti-drug initiative, is financed by $1.3 billion in U.S. aid.
The Bush administration has requested an additional $880 million in
assistance, about half of which would go to Colombia.

Pastrana insisted that anti-drug campaigns in Colombia are bound to fail as
long as Americans and Europeans continue to consume large quantities of
cocaine and heroin.

"The drug problem, for the most part, is caused by demand, and if there is
no control over demand, we can do nothing," Pastrana said.

Despite two decades of costly crackdowns here and the loss of thousands of
lives in the fight against narco-traffickers, drug production continues to
expand in Colombia, which supplies 90 percent of the cocaine and most of
the heroin sold on U.S. streets.

A growing number of prominent Colombians, however, are calling for an end
to the policy of using police crop-dusting aircraft to fumigate coca and
opium poppies, the raw materials for cocaine and heroin. They argue that
the herbicides damage the environment and cause illness among peasant drug
farmers.

Others critics, including a Colombian senator and the head of Pastrana's
Conservative Party, have gone even further by calling for the legalization
of drugs.

But Pastrana gave no indication that he would halt the fumigation program,
and he sidestepped a question about drug legalization.

At the February 1990 summit in Cartagena, the leaders of the United States,
Colombia, Peru and Bolivia pledged to wage a unified fight against
narcotics trafficking. Then-President George Bush, who attended the
meeting, called the alliance the "first anti-drug cartel."

Pastrana said a new conference of world leaders should address issues
ranging from fumigation to money laundering to trafficking in the chemicals
used to make drugs to the demand for narcotics.

"There were so many things that were not discussed in the beginning that
today are becoming important issues," he said.

Pastrana suggested that President Bush should take the lead in organizing
the conference.

The Colombian leader also downplayed speculation that the Bush
administration may be inclined to get more involved in Colombia's guerrilla
war.

So far, U.S. military aid, which includes troop training provided by the
Army's Green Berets as well as dozens of helicopters, has been geared
toward fighting drug traffickers.

But the line between counter-drug and counterinsurgency aid often blurs
because Colombian rebels earn millions of dollars annually by taxing and
protecting drug farmers and traffickers.

"Does the United States want another Central America? I don't think so,"
Pastrana said, referring to U.S. involvement in counter-insurgency
campaigns in Nicaragua and El Salvador in the 1980s. "I don't think any
country in the world wants to get involved in our war, which is why we have
to strengthen the peace process."

Pastrana, 47, a former TV newsman, senator and Bogota mayor, was elected in
1998. But his term has been marred by an economic recession and his failure
to produce concrete advances in the peace process.

His government opened talks with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia, or FARC, in January 1999 and began an informal dialogue with the
National Liberation Army, a smaller rebel group known by its Spanish
acronym, ELN.

Pastrana granted the FARC a 16,200-square-mile haven, known in Spanish as
the despeje, to hold peace talks. But progress has been excruciatingly
slow. Talks with the ELN were suspended last month. And both the FARC and
the ELN continue to clash with army troops, kidnap civilians and blow up
oil pipelines.

What's more, the FARC has used the sanctuary to cultivate drug crops and
stash kidnapping victims. As a result, many Colombians have soured on the
peace process and are calling on the government to retake the rebels'
territory.

In a stark reminder of the violence, Jairo Rojas, a Colombian legislator
who was vice president of the peace committee in the House of
Representatives, was shot and killed Wednesday night in the garage of his
apartment building in Bogota.

Rojas helped set up the first meeting between Pastrana and FARC leader
Manuel Marulanda in July 1998, shortly before Pastrana took office. Rojas
took over a leadership role on the peace committee after its former
chairman, Diego Turbay, was shot and killed by suspected FARC rebels last
December.

In the interview, Pastrana insisted that progress has been made toward
peace and pointed out that canceling the rebel-held sanctuary would only
intensify the war.

Pastrana pointed out that FARC and government teams have agreed on a
12-point negotiating agenda and that international observers are monitoring
the talks. He said that his goal is to leave behind an "irreversible" peace
process for the next president.

"I don't know if I am too optimistic," he said, "but if we put things into
context, much has been accomplished."