SPEAKERS REVEAL DOWNSIDE TO WAR ON DRUGS

America's drug addictions and supply-side military approach to attacking
the cocaine supply in its $1.2 billion "Plan Colombia" are destroying South
America's fourth biggest country, a pair of speakers will tell an Anchorage
audience Monday night in speeches at the Loussac Library.

Speaking against the U.S. Plan Colombia will be Andrew Miller of Amnesty
International and Sanho Tree of the Institute for Policy Studies.

As many as 6,000 Colombians live in Anchorage, estimated Beatriz Romero, a
Colombian who is an officer with the nonprofit Council of Latin American in
Alaska for Special Services. Romero will introduce the speakers, though the
council is not a sponsor of their visit.

Miller and Tree are on a 15-city, six-day speaking tour that includes
Anchorage and other cities with large Colombian populations and legislators
important in Washington decision-making.

One Anchorage Latino with special interest in Colombia is Cuban-born
Gilbert Sanchez, a broadcast journalist who has lived in Alaska since 1979.
Sanchez, like Romero, refused to criticize Plan Colombia or other U.S. drug
initiatives, but Sanchez added: "I am concerned that most American people
have no idea what may lie on the horizon. This would not be another Gulf
War, a 100-day war. This would be an extended overseas assignment. It's a
principle of this country to fight our wars on other people's turf."

Cosponsoring the meeting -- an attempt to raise awareness of the
relationship between U.S. military involvement in Colombia and the
deterioration of life for the common Colombian -- are the local chapter of
Amnesty International and Alaskans Concerned about Latin America, an
organization formed 30 years ago to raise concern about the region.