AERIAL DRUG SPRAYING CALLED HAZARD

RIOBLANCO DE SOTARA, Colombia -- The children and their teachers were in
the schoolyard, they say, playing soccer and basketball and waiting for
classes to begin when the crop duster appeared.

At first they waved, but as the plane drew closer and a gray mist streamed
from its wings, teachers rushed the pupils into classrooms.

Over the next two weeks, planes taking part in a U.S.-sponsored program to
eradicate heroin poppy cultivation returned repeatedly. Again and again,
residents charge, the government planes also sprayed buildings and fields
that were not supposed to be targets, damaging residents' health and crops.

"The pilot was flying low, so there is no way he could not have seen those
children," said Nidia Majin, principal of La Floresta rural elementary
school, whose 70 pupils were sprayed that Monday morning last June.

"We had no way to give them first aid, so I sent them home. But they had to
cross fields and streams that had also been contaminated, so some of them
got sick."

In fact, say leaders of this Yanacona Indian village high in the Andes,
dozens of other residents also became ill during the spraying campaign,
complaining of nausea, dizziness, vomiting, rashes, blurred vision,
earaches and stomachaches. They say the spraying damaged legitimate crops,
undermining government efforts to support residents who abandoned poppy
growing.

Such incidents are not limited to this village of 5,000, say critics in
Colombia and the United States, but have occurred in many parts of Colombia
and are bound to increase if the fumigation program is intensified, as the
Clinton administration is proposing as part of a $1.6 billion Colombian
emergency aid package.

Critics say they frequently receive reports of mistakes and abuses by the
planes' Colombian pilots. The U.S. and Colombian governments ignore the
reports, the critics say.

State Department officials deny indiscriminate spraying takes place. A U.S.
Embassy official in Bogota described the residents' claims of illnesses as
"scientifically impossible."