COLOMBIA POLICE SAY HIT DRUG TRADER POCKETS IN 2000

BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) -- Colombian police confiscated 45 tons of
cocaine and 1,250 pounds (570 kilograms) of heroin, morphine and opium
in 2000, preventing $8.43 billion from reaching the hands of drugs
traffickers, according to an official report on the drugs war this
year.

Officials believe the drugs trade is intertwined with Colombia's
brutal internal conflict -- the longest in Latin America -- which has
made this Andean nation one of the most violent in the world, turned
it into the capital of kidnapping and cost 35,000 civilian lives in
the past decade alone.

The cocaine haul -- Colombia is considered the world's leading
producer -- represented a 44.5 percent increase on the amount
confiscated in 1999, Colombia's anti-drugs police chief, Gen. Gustavo
Socha, told reporters late on Friday.

The police report did not include drugs confiscated by the military,
which totaled more than 50 tons of cocaine in 2000, according to the
joint military command.

That brings the total to 95 tons of cocaine confiscated in 2000 -- a
doubling of the 1999 haul by the authorities.

But police said the picture was less upbeat regarding the 1,250 pounds
(570 kilograms) of opium, morphine and heroin it had confiscated -- a
17.6 percent fall compared with 1999.

And the war on drugs, being targeted by President Andres Pastrana's
Plan Colombia -- with $1.3 billion of mostly military aid from
Washington -- is far from won. Police reckon illicit drug cultivation
has shot up in recent months.

Colombia is the source of 90 percent of the world's cocaine and
produces six tons of heroin a year, supplying much of the high-grade
heroin sold on U.S. streets, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Agency (DEA).

Officials in Bogota and Washington say far-right paramilitary groups,
which some human rights groups allege have links with the Colombian
military, and leftist guerrillas finance their operations with the
lucrative proceeds of the drugs trade.

Army commander Gen. Jorge Mora told reporters on Friday that "with
every day that passes, the difference between guerrillas and drugs
traffickers is minimum, and the difference between paramilitaries and
drugs traffickers is minimum."

Colombia has been riven by four decades of strife involving two main
rebel groups, the Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
(FARC), the Cuban-inspired National Liberation Army (ELN) and the
far-right paramilitaries, grouped nationally into the United
Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC).

The army vehemently denies that some in the military collaborate with
or turn a blind eye to the far-right bands.

"With these drugs hauls in 2000, we have prevented the expansion of
the drugs trade and prevented them from netting income of $8.43
billion, destined to finance their violent and terrorist activities in
Colombia," Socha said.

Socha said police in 2000 destroyed, by fumigation, 140,283 acres,
(56,795 hectares) of coca leaf -- the raw material for cocaine -- thus
scotching the production of 329 tons of the drug.

He said 22,854 acres (9,253 hectares) of poppies, which would have
produced nine tons of heroin, had also been wiped out.

Police captured 8,510 drugs traffickers, destroyed 55 cocaine
production laboratories and 66 clandestine landing strips to shift
drugs and immobilized 61 planes.

Nevertheless, police said that illicit cultivation had risen
dramatically in mountain and jungle areas recently.

Police estimate there are currently 259,350 acres (105,000 hectares)
of coca leaf and 16,055 acres (6,500 hectares) of poppies in this
Andean nation of 40 million inhabitants. Police gave no comparative
figures.

Plan Colombia is expected to get into full gear next year, targeting
drugs production in the guerrilla-held jungle areas in the south of
the country. Many political analysts fear Colombia's intensifying
conflict will grow bloodier in 2001.