WAR AND DRUG TRADE CAUSE COLOMBIA ECOLOGICAL DISASTER By REUTERS

BOGOTA - Warring leftist guerrillas and far-right paramilitaries, and the
illegal drug trade in the world's top cocaine producer are causing an
ecological disaster of "unsuspected proportions" in Colombia, according to
an army report published on Wednesday.

The report, titled 'The scars on Mother Earth,' said the rebel groups'
tactic of blowing up oil pipelines had polluted the Andean nation's
ecosystem with more than 2 million tons of crude oil in the last decade.

The drug trade, it said, contaminated the soil with 200,000 tons of
chemicals a year and causing deforestation at a pace that was rapidly
destroying the country's jungles.

"Guerrillas and paramilitaries have caused this ecological catastrophe
which, ... if the current rate of deforestation continues, will turn half
the country's jungles into pasture in 17 years," the report said, quoting
Environment Ministry experts.

It said the heavily wooded regions of Amazonas, bordering Peru in the
south, and Orinoquia, which borders Venezuela and Brazil in the east, were
in were in "imminent danger."

Colombia is one of the world's five top countries in terms of water
resources and biodiversity, the Environment Ministry says. No one there was
available for comment on the report.

The army calculated that about 3,600 square miles of jungle and
agricultural land had been lost in the past decade.

Although a tiny proportion of Colombia's total area of about 441,000 square
miles, the destruction still represents "ecological damage ... of
unsuspected proportions," it said.

Colombia has been riven by four decades of strife -- the longest conflict
in Latin America -- involving the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN), far-right
paramilitary death squads and the army, which critics accuse of being
linked to paramilitaries or turning a blind eye to their activities.

The war has claimed 35,000 lives in the past decade alone.

Crude And Coke

The United States believes the 17,000-strong FARC, Latin America's biggest
rebel army, plays a dominant role in drug production.

Colombia is the source of 90 percent of the world's cocaine, with annual
output of 520 tons, and it also produces 6 tons of heroin annually,
according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency.

Guerrillas have targeted oil, Colombia's main export, as a tactic in their
war against the state, staging some 1,000 assaults on oil pipelines since
1986. The 5,000-strong ELN has been responsible for 80 percent of the assaults.

The army report, citing Environment Ministry figures, said crude oil had
contaminated 1,625 miles of river, equivalent to the total length of
Colombia's two biggest rivers, the Cauca and the Magdalena, with slicks of
up to 112 miles in length.

The report called the drug trade "one of the direct causes of the
destruction of biodiversity," saying coca leaf, poppies and marijuana
cultivation had caused serious deforestation.

It cited Colombia's human rights monitor's office as saying 3,300 square
miles of jungle had been lost in the last 30 years.

Furthermore, it said some 200,000 tons a year of 28 types of chemicals used
in the processing of coca leaf and poppies for cocaine and heroin were
leaching into the water and soil.