CRITICISM OF COLOMBIA'S DRUG WAR LOOMS AS U.S. TALKS NEAR

School wasn't in session the day the crop-dusters bolted out of the morning
sky.

But the coca, which the U.S. government is paying Colombia more than $1
billion to wipe out, grows right up to the borders of the schoolyard here.
It surrounds the tin-roofed homes and fills a large field behind the church.
It lines the roads and blankets the rolling hills as far as the eye can see.

The hillsides --- and the school's soccer field --- are dead brown now, a
stark contrast to the vivid greens of the nearby tropical forest.

"The effects of the fumigation here have been catastrophic," said Miriam
Teresa Rodriguez, a teacher at La Concordia's 150-student primary school.
"The spraying killed the coca, but it killed the food crops, too. Some of
our children would eat mangos and bananas from the trees around the
schoolyard for their lunch, but now those are dead."

As President Andres Pastrana travels to Washington this week to meet with
President Bush, his ambitious program to break the back of the Colombian
drug trade has kicked into high gear.

U.S. and Colombian officials are proclaiming the program's first punch, a
massive aerial fumigation assault, a success so far, with more than 70,000
acres of coca destroyed.

After securing a $1.3 billion commitment last year from the Clinton
administration, Pastrana may ask Bush at his Tuesday meeting for trade
preferences aimed at kick-starting Colombia's faltering economy.

Pastrana's program, Plan Colombia, has garnered strong support in Congress,
where backers believe it will slow the flow of cocaine into America while
choking off a lucrative resource for Colombia's Marxist guerrillas, who earn
millions by taxing coca farmers and drug traffickers.

But Plan Colombia has plenty of critics, too.

The European Parliament has been critical, raising concerns over the
environmental effects of aerial fumigation, as well as the messy record of
human rights violations by Colombia's military and right-wing paramilitary
groups, which reportedly work closely with the army.

A minority in Congress echoes those concerns, while others who generally
back the plan worry that the United States may be stumbling into a deeper
involvement in Colombia's nasty 37-year-old civil war. They also fear the
conflict over the drug trade will spread to Colombia's neighbors, creating
regional instability.

Colombia supplies an estimated 80 percent to 90 percent of the world's
cocaine, with much of the raw ingredient --- coca --- grown in a
jungle-covered swath of territory along its southern border.

In the past two years, a few hundred U.S. military advisers have trained two
special anti-narcotics battalions of the Colombian military and are now
supplying satellite maps to target fields for fumigation. A shipment of U.S.
Blackhawk helicopters scheduled to arrive this year will provide security
for the small fumigation planes, which in the past have been harried by
ground fire from guerrilla forces.

But Plan Colombia's strongest critics come from within Colombia itself,
especially in the province of Putumayo, an isolated terrain of muddy rivers
and low hills where the bright green bush flourishes in the blistering
tropical sun.

Leaders here say local governments were not consulted as Plan Colombia was
formulated. Fumigation has decimated the rural economy, while the government
has so far failed to deliver significant emergency aid or extensive
alternative development programs, they say.

"Two months after the fumigation, the national government has done nothing
to help the peasants," said Alfonso Martinez, former mayor of La Hormiga, a
small commercial hub in the Guamuez River valley near La Concordia. "The
peasants grow coca because there is no other way to make a living. Now they
have nothing to eat because the spraying has destroyed their food crops as
well as their coca."

La Hormiga officials have taken 800 complaints from peasants since the
spraying began in late December. Along with food crops, the fumigation has
killed cattle, pigs, chicken and commercially raised fish, as well as
sickened children and adults with skin rashes and lung problems, they say.

Rigoberto Rosero, a peasant whose five acres of coca border the La Concordia
school, said he grows coca because it's the only crop that makes money. He
claims he has been trying to get out of the coca business, raising other
crops and pooling resources with neighbors to grow guinea pigs, which are
sold for food here.

"Everything was killed," he said. "My bananas, sugar cane, corn and 80
guinea pigs," he said. "My son has been ill with asthma and skin rashes, and
I've spent the money I saved for a new house on his medical treatment. I've
been trying to raise other crops, and I would've signed up to cut down my
own coca, but they never gave me the chance."

Otoniel Urrea, who lives nearby, said his food crops were wiped out when the
planes spread large coca fields nearby.

"I won't lie," he said. "I had a little coca. But now we have nothing, and
the government has sent no help. A friend is giving us bananas to eat, but
soon there won't be any."

Colombian officials insist local governments were given the chance to sign
up for voluntary eradication programs that would have exempted them from
fumigation. An example is Puerto Asis, about 30 miles from La Hormiga, where
there has been no spraying because hundreds of peasants promised to cut down
their coca in exchange for about $1,000 each.

As for claims of sickness, officials say the herbicide being used ---
Roundup --- is not harmful to humans, although labels on the product in the
United States warn against user contact. They also insist the planes have
targeted "industrial crops" --- large plantations raised under contract to
Marxist guerrillas.

"What was fumigated was where there were zones of industrial crops," said
Gonzalo de Francisco, head of Plan Colombia's social programs. "These people
are angry because their coca was destroyed. Maybe some of them thought they
would never be sprayed."

Francisco admitted some food crops have been destroyed but said the peasants
can seek reimbursement through the official complaint system. He also said
that if aid and alternative programs have been slow to reach the villages,
it's because the effort is so massive.

"We're setting up a social program that is unprecedented in Colombia," he
said. "Obviously, we need to make a huge effort in institutional
cooperation. But we really believe it will solve the problem."

That confidence isn't shared in coca country.

Luis Carlos Gonzalez is head of a tribe of Cofan Indians who live near La
Concordia. The group claims it raised only a small patch of coca but watched
in disbelief as herbicide sprayed on nearby fields spread over their chicken
barn and fish pond, both funded by the Colombian government.

"We had 180 chickens and 1,400 fish die," Gonzalez said. "It's a crazy
government that could do this. We're all living off bananas and fish caught
from the river now. Let the government come here so we can tell them we
aren't cockroaches to be fumigated."