AD CAMPAIGN ACCUSES EUROPEAN COKE SNORTERS OF FUNDING COLOMBIA'S CIVIL
WAR

Colombia's vice president has it out for coke-snorting celebrities,
targeting people like supermodel Kate Moss who he said are directly
financing his country's violent, drug-fueled civil conflict.

"Cocaine not only destroys you, it also destroys a country," is the
theme of a hard-hitting Colombian-led advertising campaign designed
to change attitudes among Europeans about their booming cocaine habit
in the same way that "Just Say No" did in the United States.

Moss herself doesn't appear in the ads, but Vice President Francisco
Santos said she's a perfect example of liberal European attitudes
toward drug use -- she's enjoyed a career comeback even after a
British tabloid published photos of her apparently snorting cocaine.

"To me its baffling, that somebody who helps cause so much pain in
Colombia is doing better than ever and winning more contracts than
ever," Santos told The Associated Press in an interview.

"And I never once heard her say, 'I'm sorry.' When in Colombia,
policeman, judges, journalists, common men and women are dying every
day because of (cocaine consumption) that hurts," the official added.

Santos said he'd love Moss to see what cocaine consumption does to
Colombia, where drug-financed armed groups murder hundreds annually
and force thousands to abandon their homes.

A spokeswoman at Storm, Moss's modeling agency in London, did not
immediately return a call and e-mail seeking comment.

Colombia hired New York-based advertising agency Lowe Worldwide to
design its "cocaine curse" campaign, which Santos was to unveil in
London on Wednesday along with 11 European drug czars.

"We need to tell Europeans that that line of coke they snort is
tainted in blood," Santos said.

One ad depicts a pinstriped "coke head" -- with an oversized nose --
laying land mines in a coca field. Colombia now ranks first in the
world in land-mine casualties, averaging four a day. Another shows
him wielding a chain saw on a charred, deforested hillside.

Colombia, the world's largest producer of cocaine, hopes European
governments will fund placement of the advertisements on billboards,
television and even bathrooms of trendy dance clubs

It's also launched an English-language Web site,
http://www.sharedresponsibility.gov.co, to highlight its efforts in
the U.S.-sponsored war on drugs, including aerial eradication of more
than 600,000 hectares (1.5 million acres) of coca, the base
ingredient of cocaine, since 2002.

Colombia's government is also seeking more European aid for projects
to help peasant farmers switch from growing coca to legal crops like
tropical fruits, coffee and rubber.

Santos is scheduled to attend Thursday a public forum on drug use in
Basingstoke, England, in which five victims of Colombia's conflict
will tell their stories.

According to the Lisbon-based European Monitoring Center for Drugs
and Drug Addiction, cocaine use among young adults in Spain and the
United Kingdom has doubled over the past decade, reaching levels
similar to those in the United States, where 5 percent have reported
recent usage.

The center said surveys in Denmark, Italy, Hungary, the Netherlands
and Austria also showed a rise in cocaine use among young adults.

Santos said police in Portugal, a major gateway for smugglers, have
seized 30 tons of cocaine so far this year -- more than four time the
amount last year.

In the meantime, Santos, echoing findings by the White House Office
of National Drug Control Policy, said cocaine consumption has
declined by 50 percent in United States over the past two decades.

Colombia's right-wing paramilitary groups and its main guerrilla
group are not only enemies on the battlefield but also are among the
nation's biggest drug traffickers.

The United States in March indicted 50 leaders of the leftist
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, charging them with sending
more than US$25 billion (€20 billion) worth of cocaine around the
world to finance terrorism at home.