U.S. OFFICIALS SEES LONG ROAD AHEAD IN COLOMBIA DRUG WAR

BOGOTA, Colombia -- While a U.S.-backed offensive against drug crops speeds
ahead, alternative development aid for farmers will take years to fully
succeed -- and will require much more money from Washington, a top U.S.
official said.

George Wachtenheim, who heads the U.S. Agency for International Development
in Colombia, acknowledged that the development aid was going slowly while
crop dusters escorted by U.S.-trained troops and U.S.-provided combat
helicopters are wiping out drug crops in Colombia at a record pace.

But he said it was "not fair" to expect instant results from the aid
programs, which are designed to help wean farmers off profitable drug crops
to other, legal plants.

With no economic alternative, many of the coca farmers in southern Colombia
who have been hit by aerial fumigation earlier this year are already
replanting the drug crops.

"Fumigation obviously is something that happens much faster than
alternative development," Wachtenheim told foreign journalists earlier this
week.

Under a $1.3 billion aid program approved last year, nearly 100 square
miles of coca have been fumigated since late December, mostly in Putumayo
province. The campaign is ostensibly targeting large-scaled plantations.

However, small farmers who have also been hit are complaining that food
crops were killed alongside the coca, and that pledged alternative
development aid has not arrived.

Wachtenheim said several thousand small-time farmers who have signed pacts
with the government to manually eradicate their coca crops will begin
receiving seeds for growing subsistence food crops such as bananas and
corn, and aid to raise livestock.

However, there is no infrastructure development for the farmers to bring
their crops to markets.

Wachtenheim said longer-term development projects will require at least
$220 million in additional U.S. aid over the next five years to ensure the
farmers do not revert to growing coca.