DRUG FIGHT CAUSES FANNING OUT OF COCA, COLOMBIA REPORTS

Plant Transforms Communities As It Evades Elimination

LLORENTE, Colombia -- This isolated town used to be as sedate and dirt poor
as all the rest.

Then came the coca and its byproducts -- the discos and prostitutes; the
pool halls and cantinas; the cheap hotels and the businesses that cater to
newcomers; stores that sell wood planks, tin sheeting and other materials
to fashion flimsy but serviceable housing.

The transformation began more than a year ago, local government officials
and residents say, but accelerated dramatically with a huge U.S.-backed
campaign to destroy coca fields in an adjacent province, Putamayo.

That effort, the officials said, displaced coca farmers and their crops to
the steamy jungles here in Narino province. It is a familiar pattern. Coca
came to Colombia because of successful efforts to eliminate it in Bolivia
and Peru, though aerial spraying was not used there.

"What the fumigation did was to transfer the phenomenon from Putumayo to
Narino," said Gov. Parmenio Cuellar of Narino. "And if they fumigate
Narino, the problem will go to another place."

Nowhere are the effects more visible than in this town on Highway 10, once
a sleepy community of poor farmers that is luring hundreds of former
Putumayo farmers, coca-laboratory workers and others drawn by the coca trade.

"They call this Little Putumayo, and they say people who are coming here
are leaving Putumayo because of the fumigation," said the Rev. Domingo
Moreno, a Roman Catholic priest who works in Llorente. "The people, more
and more, are lured by coca, tempted by the magic leaf. Not only are they
starting to plant coca, but they're also leaving behind the other plants
they grew, plantation bananas and cacao."

Critics of aerial defoliation said the expansion of coca in Narino and
other regions bears out a warning about the plan to destroy coca in
Putumayo: Eradication in one region causes coca to move to others.

"The argument I've always made is that the fumigation will not, in any way,
do away with the coca fields," said Carlos Palacios, an expert on the coca
trade and the human development secretary in the town of Valle del Guamues
in Putumayo. "What fumigation does is that it causes the fields to simply
transfer to other places."

Opposition to spraying is so strong in southern Colombia that mayors,
church officials and others have been pushing President Andres Pastrana's
government and the United States to stop the spraying. Cuellar and three
other governors visited Washington this week to criticize the program and
to lobby for large-scale economic assistance to improve agriculture.

U.S. officials counter that the size of the Narino crop, with fewer than
15,000 acres under cultivation, is manageable compared with the 250,000
acres in the coca-growing heartland of Putumayo and Caqueta provinces
before large-scale spraying began in late December. The Americans also note
that the movement of people and planting of coca in Narino began long
before the spraying in Putumayo.

The Americans say Plan Colombia, with its reliance on crop dusters,
military helicopters and battalions of Colombian anti-narcotics troops, is
intended to contain the spread of coca. The plan is "intended to apply
pressure in more places simultaneously than previously possible," said Jim
Mack, deputy assistant secretary for international narcotics and law
enforcement.

But the officials are worried about how much coca is growing in Narino.