DRUG FARMERS SEEK ALTERNATIVES

BOGOTA, Colombia -- As the U.S. Congress debates funding for a new
counterdrug initiative in Latin America, the United Nations is asking
Colombia to accept international monitoring of the U.S.-sponsored crop
spraying program that is coming under mounting attack here from politicians
and peasants alike.

The U.N. Drug Control Program's representative in Bogota, Klaus Nyholm,
said the Colombian government was studying the proposal for an audit of the
drug crop spraying campaign, which he called "inhuman," for targeting small
farmers, and "ineffective."

"We can't do anything to prevent it but an international audit would be
able to document what is being done," he said.

A controversial U.S.-sponsored aerial spraying campaign to eradicate half
this nation's coca and poppy fields has Colombian farmers clamoring for
less destructive alternatives to end their economic dependence on drug crops.

Washington is funding the counternarcotics offensive, known as Plan
Colombia, with the bulk of the $1.3-billion in aid approved last year.
Congress is now considering an additional $676-million for Colombia and its
Andean neighbors.

As of June, Colombia's anti-narcotics police had fumigated 127,400 acres of
coca crops, mostly in Putumayo province on the border with Ecuador where
nearly half of the cocaine-producing bushes are grown.

While Colombian and U.S. officials hailed the results as a major advance in
the drug war, politicians here are questioning the policy as unjust and
ill-conceived.

"An anti-narcotics policy with its prime focus on fumigation is a policy
that is condemned to failure," said Sen. Juan Manuel Ospina. While Colombia
has been using aerial fumigation against drug crops since 1992, the area of
coca and poppy cultivation has skyrocketed to more than 400,000 acres.

As a new crop-dusting offensive began last week in the provinces of Cauca
and Narino, national Human Rights Ombudsman Eduardo Cifuentes called for an
immediate suspension of the spraying, citing the lack of an approved
environmental protection plan and the absence of effective alternative
development programs.

"There are no real programs for crop substitution, except attempts that are
being carried out in Putumayo province," Cifuentes wrote in a letter to
Justice Minister Romulo Gonzalez.

As the aggressive aerial spraying began in Putumayo in December, nearly 40
communities there agreed to manually eradicate their illegal crops to
forestall fumigation, in exchange for government aid and investment in
infrastructure.

But, according to Ospina, only two of the communities have received the
promised subsidies, leading many farmers who signed the pacts to replant
coca bushes.

The government's representative for social programs in Putumayo, Gonzalo de
Francisco, was not available for an interview.

Though the crop substitution programs in Putumayo have yet to work, farmers
in Cauca and Narino are angered that they have not been offered the same
option, although their governor has repeatedly presented alternative
development strategies for the region.

Meanwhile, the Colombian Senate called hearings with government officials
to question the fumigation policy, and two senators plan to introduce a
bill that would change the focus of the anti-narcotics program from aerial
spraying to offering the hundreds of thousands of peasant farmers who
cultivate drug crops a legal alternative.

"Fumigation does not resolve the problem, but it worsens others. We are not
in favor of the illegal crops but rather against an irrational policy,"
said Ospina, one of the sponsors of the bill.

Ospina's bill would not prohibit aerial spraying altogether, but would make
it a last recourse if social programs to wean peasants off the illegal
crops fail.

But Floro Tunubala, governor of Cauca province, currently targeted in the
spray campaign, sees little support in the government for alternatives to
spraying.

"They are going to go ahead with the fumigations, trampling everyone," he
said after two days of meetings with President Andres Pastrana and drug
policy officials in Bogota to try to halt spraying in his province.

He also met with U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson who he said told him the
spraying was necessary to get approval in Washington for new funding.

Tunubala, along with governors of five other southern Colombian provinces,
has led efforts to secure funding from the European Union to offer farmers
alternatives to growing drug crops and securing markets for the new products.

But the government, Tunubala said, appears willing to invest in social
development only once the crops have been sprayed. The lag time between the
destruction of the crops and the arrival of government help, however, is
driving many farmers further into the jungle to replant the drug crops.

"The government's position is to fumigate first and then repair the
(social) damage it causes. We are asking that it be turned around," he said.