COLOMBIA SPRAYING PLAN MAY BE RETHOUGHT, OFFICIAL SAYS

A senior State Department official said Thursday that a chemical solution
used to spray illegal crops
in Colombia "is not a totally benign product" and that Washington might
reconsider the program.

Rand Beers, assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and
law enforcement affairs,
appeared to give at least some credence to complaints by peasants in
Colombia that aerial spraying
is making them sick, causing skin rashes and diarrhea.

"This particular mixture does cause slight irritation to the eyes and the
skin," said Beers, who helps
oversee a $1.3-billion aid package to Bogota known as Plan Colombia. "This
is not a totally benign
product."

His comments were surprising because as international pressure against the
American-sponsored
program has mounted, U.S. officials have flatly rejected any suggestion
that the chemical solution
used in Colombia is harmful.

"We were concerned that given all of the press that has come up about this,
that we weren't doing a
good enough job of keeping you all informed," Beers told reporters at a
briefing.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has found glyphosate, the main
herbicide used in
spraying in Colombia, to be safe. In the United States, it is manufactured
by Monsanto and sold as
the weed killer Roundup.

Beers said the active ingredient in glyphosate acts on plants. "It acts on
an enzyme in a plant that
doesn't exist in animals," he said. "So its active ingredient doesn't kill
people. It kills plants.

"Having said that," he added, "if you take anything to excess, you can kill
somebody."

Beers said a number of studies were under way in Colombia to reassure
people of the chemical
solution's safety. If tests find that it poses a health hazard, Beers said
U.S. officials would consider
compensation or rethink the program.

To prove that the solution is safe, Beers said he would be willing to stand
in a coca field with his
family while spraying was under way. Beers said he has done it with no
adverse reaction.

Beers suggested that it was the dangerous chemicals Colombian peasants use
in coca cultivation and
in the making of cocaine, including paraquat and sulfuric acid, and not the
spraying solution, that was
making people sick. "There is a level of exposure that they are already
experiencing before the first
plane ever flies over any of their territory."

While insisting that he did not know why scores of peasants were
complaining of getting sick, Beers
did offer a theory.

"The individuals who are being affected by the spraying are being affected
economically," he said. "If
the spraying is successful, it kills their income."

In an apparent effort to challenge the image of peasants as victims, Beers
said that in the past 20
years slash-and-burn agriculture to grow coca has contributed to soil
erosion and destroyed more
than 9,000 square miles of rain forest, "equal to the state of
Massachusetts and another 10 percent."

"We're talking about a process here that causes significant damage on the
rain forest," Beers said,
"independent of anything that any government does."