AGENT GREEN CASTS SHADES OF VIETNAM OVER COLOMBIA

Killing fields: Clinton is backing an intensified campaign against Colombian
cocaine growers and dealers, with helicopter gunships raining defoliants on
coca plants

IN PUERTO ASIS, in the remote, coca-rich hinterland of Colombia, Father Luis
Alfonso Gomez is preparing for war. As President Bill Clinton arrives this
week to promote efforts to fight the drug trade and end the 30-year civil
war on which it has thrived, the priest fears his country may drag the
superpower into a new Vietnam.

The parallels are all too apparent: not only is the local terrain as
forbidding as the forests of southeast Asia, but America is even developing
a toxic herbicide known by its Colombian opponents as Agent Green - a thinly
veiled allusion to Agent Orange, the toxin that killed and maimed Vietcong
and American soldiers during the Vietnam war.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the country's most
powerful guerrilla group, meanwhile, is rallying supporters to fight any
attempt to clamp down on a business from which it is believed to make $500m
(?330m) a year. Paul Reyes, the group's chief negotiator, warned Washington
it risked being dragged into a long and nightmarish conflict.

In towns such as Puerto Asis, many already appear to be heeding FARC's call.
"We arrive at a village to give mass and find just women and children in
church," Gomez said. "The men are all being trained by the guerrillas, who
tell them that the gringos [Americans] are going to invade."

Clinton will spend just eight hours in Colombia during his visit on
Wednesday to Cartagena, a coastal colonial resort hundreds of miles from the
cocaine-producing regions. His visit is intended to endorse Plan Colombia, a
$1.3 billion aid package devised by President Andres Pastrana and approved
by America last week, that aims to bring peace largely by trying to
eradicate narcotics and the country's drug barons.

Despite efforts to promote a $240m share going to judicial reform, human
rights education and the restoration of democracy, the bulk of the money
will go on military aid - prompting fears it will tempt the government to
step up counter-insurgency measures rather than seek a peaceful solution to
violence dating back 36 years.

America is providing 60 Black Hawk helicopters and Huey-2 gunships - earlier
versions of which flew above the jungles of Vietnam - as well as 200 special
forces to train two Colombian battalions to secure drug fields and allow the
country's police force to destroy crops and laboratories.

Plan Colombia appears to call for more than just the eradication of crops,
however. It also seeks to eliminate the guerrilla and paramilitary groups
that guard the fields so that aircraft can safely spray crop-decimating
fungus over the plantations.

While initial flights will use a fungus similar to weedkiller, America has
asked the United Nations to oversee tests for a new defoliant, Fusarium
oxysporum, that officials in Washington describe as a potential "silver
bullet" for killing coca plants.

Local environmentalists and scientists have warned that this Agent Green
could cause mutations among humans and plants in the delicate Amazon
basin.Human rights groups have also criticised Clinton for his decision last
week to waive a list of conditions set by the US Congress that linked the
aid package to improvements in human rights - in particular, the efforts to
block human-rights violations by the Colombian army and its right-wing
paramilitary allies, who are as dependent on money from the drugs trade as
Farc.

Pastrana so far has met only one of the conditions by handing over
jurisdiction for the trial of military officers charged with such
violations. Although he has fired four generals and suspended 30 other
military officers, the action has done little to quell the fears of many
Colombians that American money could led to more massacres and atrocities of
the sort that have already seen more than 35,000 people killed in the past
10 years.

Earlier this month, four boys and two girls aged six to 11 were killed and
five wounded when a school party was ambushed by an army patrol in Antioquia
province. Witnesses claimed that troops armed with assault rifles and
grenades fired on the children for 45 minutes. The Colombian army insisted
the youngsters were trapped in the crossfire in a clash with Marxist rebels.

Colombia's neighbours have also expressed alarm about the effects of
American involvement: Brazil warned last week it would take no part in any
international action in Colombia; Venezuela has refused to let American
planes fly over its territory to track the movement of Colombian drugs.

Clinton will not see first hand the crucial role the drug plays in providing
a livelihood for local peasants such as Lehia Roja, a mother of nine who
tills two hectares of coca near Puerto Asis. If aerial spraying begins, she
fears she will lose her single form of income and become one of an estimated
30,000 "cocaine refugees" forced to leave their homes.

"With coca I can raise my children and pay for their school fees," Roja said
last week. "It is simple: there is no other commerce here."

Additional reporting: Ruth Morris, Puerto Asis