COLOMBIAN DRUG FIGHTERS OPPOSE KILLER FUNGUS

Cocaine Harvest In Colombia: Will The Fungus Kill The Crops?

The United States is pressuring Colombia to introduce a fungus it
insists will attack drug crops while leaving other plants untouched.

Environmentalists believe it could wreak havoc on the country's
fragile eco-system.

Advocates call the fungus, fusarium oxysporum, the silver bullet that
will destroy coca plants, used to make cocaine.

The United States is exerting pressure on Colombia to attack the
estimated 300,000 hectares of coca under cultivation. They hope that
this action will reduce the flow of over 500 tonnes of cocaine that
reach the US every year.

The Colombians are not so keen. The Colombian Environment Minister
Juan Mayr is adamantly opposed.

"I told them: 'Gentlemen, your project is not welcome'," Mr Mayr
said.

He is backed by many leading ecologists, not just in Colombia but in
the US.

Eric Rosenquist is a national programme leader at the US Department of
Agriculture's Research Service in Beltsville, Maryland.

"The tests show so far that it is a reasonably good control agent," he
says.

"But I wouldn't extrapolate from that that it will work in Colombia.
The ecology is different. There are competing organisms."'

Fungal Fears

The fear is that once introduced into Colombia the fungus will mutate
and attack the fragile eco-system of the Amazon, one of the most
diverse on earth.

Opponents of the plan also do not understand why Colombia should be
the experimental laboratory.

Plans to introduce a variant of the fungus into Florida last year, to
attack marijuana crops, were abandoned after an outcry by farmers and
environmentalists.

Colombian Senator Rafael Orduz called a hearing on the plan to test
the fungus in early June.

"If it's bad for Florida, why is it good for us?" he asks.

But the US drug czar's office insists the fungus is safe, and has
discounted reports of people falling ill after coming into contact
with the fusarium, variants of which are used in biological weapons.

"They... do not mutate to attack other plants," concluded a report
released by the drug czar's office.

"Humans would not fall sick as the fungus releases toxins during its
life cycle and that incidence of sickness detected during testing
referred to immune-suppressed cancer patients whose defence levels
were very low, making them vulnerable to almost any microbe."

Local commentators fear the US will steamroller Colombia into adopting
the fungus, particularly after the grant of $1.3bn of largely military
aid.

It is intended to help the beleaguered Colombian Government fight the
drug trade which is protected by guerrilla armies and their
paramilitary adversaries.

President Andres Pastrana is beset on all sides with an economy in
recession, a civil conflict that has been raging for almost 40 years,
and a booming drug trade.

The US has reached out a helping hand, but there may be strings
attached.