COLOMBIA CARTELS MOVING INTO PERU

Neighbor's Ambassador Asks U.S. For More Anti-Drug Funds.

WASHINGTON -- Peru has seen a huge increase in crops of
heroin-producing opium poppies as a result of U.S.-backed efforts to
fight drugs in neighboring Colombia, Peru's ambassador said in a
letter to U.S. lawmakers.

In the letter, Ambassador Carlos Alzamora said that "the situation is
a clear indication of the first effects of the spillover of Plan
Colombia: Intelligence information shows that Colombian criminal
cartels are relocating their opium poppy operations in Peru."

Congress has approved, with the backing of the former drug czar, Gen.
Barry McCaffrey, the ambitious $1.3 billion Plan Colombia, aimed at
wiping out cocaine and heroin production in southern Colombia.

Alzamora addressed the letter to Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., chairman of
the House International Relations Committee, to urge Congress not to
cut funding for an $800 million Andean Regional Initiative proposed
by the Bush administration. The project is designed to protect the
nations bordering Colombia from drug cartels relocating there.

A senior Bush administration official said he was not familiar with
the letter, but backed its sentiments.

Hyde, whose committee may vote on the Andean plan today, could not be reached.

Through the mid-1990s, Peru produced a major percentage of the coca
leaves used to make cocaine sold in the United States.

But Draconian anti-drug efforts, including a controversial program of
shooting down suspected drug smuggling aircraft, forced narcotics
cartels to move their coca crops into Colombia.

Alzamora's letter detailed what the ambassador said was a new drive
to grow opium poppies in the same regions once dominated by coca leaf
growers.

Democrats, with some Republican backing, have proposed using some of
the money for other projects, including diverting about $38 million
into an international campaign to fight AIDS. That proposal has been
co-sponsored by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston.

Alzamora urged Congress to leave funds intact. "I take the liberty to
insist in my request that the funds proposed for Peru in the Andean
Regional Initiative are not reduced and, if that is possible, they
are increased," he wrote.

Critics of the federally financed war on drugs said the letter
illustrated the never-ending appetite for U.S. dollars in
drug-producing countries.

"I don't think it is surprising that countries fighting the drug war
are trying to get as much money from the United States as possible,"
said Ian Vasquez, a Latin American analyst for the Cato Institute, a
Washington think tank opposed to federal anti-drug efforts.

President Bush's first budget sought to expand the Plan Colombia
initiative by providing more than $800 million for countries on
Colombia's borders to contend with anticipated movements into those
areas by drug growers under pressure.

About $200 million of that money is earmarked for Peru.

The southern area of Colombia is controlled by the FARC, or the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, a guerrilla movement that
U.S. officials said is providing protection for drug cartels in
exchange for money used to buy weapons and other equipment.

Vasquez said that as soon as Plan Colombia was approved, the
Colombian police began a crackdown on drug production in the southern
part of their country.

"As a result, for the past year or so, there has been an increase in
drug trafficking in Peru," said Vasquez. "That is a reversal of an
earlier trend in which Peru had pushed production of coca leaves (the
raw material for cocaine) into Colombia."

Alzamora said there is evidence that the Colombian cartels are moving
into the Andean valleys of Peru to grow opium poppies, which are used
in the production of heroin.

As recently as 1998, Peruvian military drug eradicators found that
about 350 acres of poppies were being grown there, Alzamora said. But
this year, 11,500 acres of poppies have been destroyed and another
20,000 acres have been discovered in recent weeks.