COLOMBIA PUTS U.S. AID TO WORK IN HUGE COCA ERADICATION PROJECT

Anti-Drug Campaign Has Wiped Out 65,000 Acres In 6 Weeks

SANTA ANA, Colombia - Now that Washington has placed more than $1 billion
in mostly military aid at his disposal, President Andres Pastrana has
ordered the most intense chemical eradication campaign ever witnessed in
the world's top coca-growing region.

Colombian police crop-dusting planes, backed by nearly 2,000 U.S.-trained
anti-narcotics troops, are swooping down each day on the swath of southern
Colombia where most of the world's cocaine originates.

Viewed from above this week in a military helicopter, the devastating
effects of the six-week campaign are unmistakable. Where 65,000 acres of
bright-green coca once flourished, today a grayish-brown moonscape stands
in stark contrast to the surrounding jungle. Farming families have fled en
masse, military officials and farmers say.

The earth is likely to remain in its scorched state for the next six
months, said army Brig. Gen. Mario Montoya, commander of the joint military
and police forces executing the eradication campaign.

"We are spraying an average of 800 hectares [2,000 acres] per day," Gen.
Montoya said, adding that the herbicide is 96 percent effective in wiping
out ground vegetation. The herbicide, glyfosate, is manufactured in the
United States under the brand name Roundup.

Trees and other more substantial jungle growth appeared to have been
unaffected by the spraying.

The controversial eradication campaign and deployment of troops has raised
the ire of the nation's largest guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which is demanding that the spraying be halted
if the government wants to resume a 2-year-old peace process.

Facing mounting pressure from the guerrillas on one side and the U.S.
Congress on the other, Mr. Pastrana now confronts the difficult decision of
whether to ease up on Plan Colombia, the $7.5 billion counternarcotics
program he launched last year, in an attempt to put the peace process back
on track. If he pulls back, top U.S. officials said recently, the future of
U.S. funding for Plan Colombia could be placed in jeopardy.

In October, the FARC imposed a three-month travel ban in the southern
province of Putumayo, the coca-growing capital of the world, to protest the
planned eradication campaign that now is the keystone of Plan Colombia. The
rebels cut off virtually all commerce in Putumayo's largest towns while
putting peace talks with the government on hold.

Safe Haven Decision

With rebel protests still under way, Mr. Pastrana must decide Wednesday
whether to extend the permission he granted two years ago for the FARC to
occupy a 16,000-square-mile safe haven bordering Putumayo or whether to
order government troops to reoccupy the zone.

The rebels have promised that if the extension is granted and other
conditions are met, they will return to the peace talks. But if the safe
haven is canceled, military analysts say, a return to all-out war could be
imminent.

While thousands of troops are being deployed throughout southern Colombia
in support of the campaign, an estimated 18,000 troops currently are
surrounding the safe haven. The army is awaiting orders from Mr. Pastrana
to move in, said Brig. Gen. Javier Hernan Arias, commander of troops along
the southwestern border of the safe haven.

"We are in a state of tense calm," he said in an interview. If the zone is
canceled, he added, "We are ready for this, and we are in a state of high
morale. This is what we've trained for - for war. This is our job."

At the same time, however, Mr. Pastrana is on the verge of granting
another, much smaller safe haven in north-central Colombia to the nation's
second-largest guerrilla group, the National Liberation Army, for an
initial nine-month period. The government has faced harsh domestic and
international criticism over the safe-haven concept, largely because it has
yielded minimal results in advancing the peace process with the FARC.

Just outside the zone, in the area where eradication missions have been
most intense - near the Putumayo towns of El Tigre, El Placer and La
Hormiga - government troops have engaged in three pitched battles against
FARC guerrillas since the campaign began Dec. 19. The insurgents have mined
and booby-trapped laboratories and have used homemade bombs to repel
government forces.

Gen. Montoya said the FARC and their chief rivals, paramilitary
"self-defense" militias, are vying for control of the region with only one
objective: to profit from the cultivation, processing and export of cocaine.

Because of the insurgents' heavy presence in the region, he added, it was
nearly impossible in previous years to conduct eradication flights of
anywhere near the intensity of the current campaign.

Previously, he said, one out of every four flights by a crop-dusting plane
would result in damages from ground fire by the insurgents because there
were no troops on the ground to secure the area before spraying began or
police moved in to secure drug labs.

Today, said Col. Hugo Manuel Benitez, commander of one of the two
U.S.-trained counternarcotics battalions operating in southern Colombia, as
many as 400 troops will be deployed to secure an area targeted for aerial
eradication.

"We enter en masse, with force," he explained. "Really, all [the
insurgents] can do is pull back."

So far, Gen. Montoya said, not a single soldier, police officer or pilot
has been injured or killed since the operations began. In addition to the
crop eradication, police backed by counternarcotics forces have seized 34
small and medium-sized laboratories used for refining the base ingredients
of cocaine.

The result, he said, has been to drive up the price of coca base in the
region from roughly $350 per pound six months ago to about $600 per pound
today.

In the estimated 500 crop-dusting flights launched since Dec. 19, only
three crop-dusters have been hit by ground fire, Gen. Montoya said. In
addition, flights that previously had to be flown at altitudes of 200 feet
or more because of ground fire from insurgents protecting coca fields now
can be flown at altitudes of 20 to 50 feet. It means the spraying can be
conducted with far greater precision and with less chance that legal crops,
rivers and other vegetation will be hit, he said.

The crop-dusters carry onboard computers that communicate with U.S.
satellites and are programmed to notify pilots when they are flying over
land identified by U.S. intelligence services as coca fields.

Coca Farms Everywhere

A confidential map supplied by the U.S. State Department Air Wing
underscored the enormous task that lies ahead for Colombia's
counternarcotics forces. Putumayo appears on the map as a swath of green
dotted by thousands of tiny red squares, each representing a coca farm.
Last year's eradication efforts for the province are indicated on the map
with scattered yellow dots, barely visible, which appear to constitute a
minuscule percentage of the area under coca cultivation.

"Since 1995, the growth rate [in cultivation] has been about 10 to 20
percent each year," Gen. Montoya said. "Our first goal of our eradication
plan is to stop the growth rate. Afterward, we will start to reverse it."

Although 140,000 acres of coca were destroyed last year throughout the
country, according to National Police estimates, more than half of the
eliminated coca was replaced by new cultivation in Putumayo alone.

Fearful of retaliation from Washington because of reports that the campaign
has damaged legal crops, top military and police officials have gone on a
public-relations offensive to justify the spraying campaign.

Brig. Gen. Gustavo Socha Salamanca, chief of the National Police
anti-narcotics unit, said that because of the sophisticated intelligence
and computer-guided procedures provided by the United States, it would be
"impossible" for pilots to spray legal crops by mistake.

But local farmers interviewed at a military base in Santa Ana complained
that the food crops necessary for the local population's survival have been
hit hard by the spraying.

"On my farm, they have wiped out my plantain and yucca crop," said Robinson
Quincero, owner of a 20-acre farm outside Santa Ana. Two acres of his farm
were devoted to coca cultivation.

"I was a person who never wanted to work in this [coca farming business].
So what can a person do?" he said. "People want to change. They're just
looking for a way out."

He is among 400 farmers who have signed up for government financial
assistance designed to wean them from dependence on coca income and help
them convert to legal crops.

Those who fail to sign up for the program will be subject to the
eradication campaign, Gen. Montoya said. But he insisted that any farmer
who loses legal crops because of erroneous spraying has a right to demand
reimbursement from the government.

Some farmers also have complained of skin sores and irritation after coming
in contact with the spray, but the government insists the herbicide is
harmless.