U.S., COLOMBIA OFFICIALS DISCUSS DRUG-WAR AID PLAN

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - As new figures showed a 20 percent rise in
Colombian cocaine production, a high-level U.S. delegation met
yesterday with leaders of this turbulent nation to discuss a
drug-fighting aid package.

The visit was led by Thomas Pickering, the State Department's
third-ranking official. It came as the U.S. Congress was opening
debate on the proposed two-year, $1.6 billion aid package that would
dramatically escalate the war on drugs in Colombia.

Primarily a military aid plan, the package includes 63 helicopters and
the training and equipping of two new army counter-drug battalions. It
aims to give Colombia the firepower, mobility and intelligence to
defeat leftist rebels who protect drug crops.

The Andean country solidified its place last year as the world's
principal source of cocaine, according to new figures compiled by the
CIA.

Cultivation of coca, the drug's raw material, increased 20 percent in
Colombia last year, the figures said. Land used for the drug totaled
465 square miles, up from 393 square miles in 1998, according to the
estimates provided to The Associated Press.

Coca cultivation has long been widespread in neighboring South
American countries, too. But largely because of Colombia's instability
- - nearly half the country is controlled by leftist rebels and their
paramilitary foes, both financed mainly by the drug trade, traffickers
have moved the bulk of coca cultivation here since the mid-1990s.

As a result, acreage devoted to the shiny green coca bush dropped in
neighboring Peru from 197 to 150 square miles from 1998 to 1999 and in
Bolivia from 147 to 85 square miles, the new figures show.

Overall, estimated cocaine production in the region was down over the
period from 825 to 765 metric tons, the CIA believes.

``As a result of the successful counterdrug operations in Peru and
Bolivia, the traffickers have been shifting their operations and
consolidating their cocaine production in Colombia,'' U.S. drug czar
Barry McCaffrey said in a statement from Washington. ``We have
actually seen significant reductions in coca cultivation in Colombia
where eradication programs are carried out.''

The Clinton administration's aid package would permit an army push
this year into guerrilla-dominated southern jungles, where Colombian
officials say the coca crop has tripled in the past two years.
U.S.-trained troops would provide ground and air protection while
planes spray herbicides on the crops.

Armed resistance could come from the leftist Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia - the guerrilla group that dominates the
countryside of southern Putumayo state, taxes the coca and protects
drug laboratories and clandestine airstrips.

Also, Colombia's defense minister is expecting violent peasant
protests.

Tens of thousands of peasants in Putumayo - many of them internal
refugees of the country's nearly 36-year civil conflict - depend on
coca for their livelihood.

President Andres Pastrana said in an interview with The Associated
Press last week that his government expects thousands of those
peasants to be displaced once the cocaine crops are killed. Some will
have to be relocated.

The proposed U.S. aid package includes $176 million for resettling
uprooted peasants and helping them find a legal way to make a living.
Apart from the usual counter-narcotics and military officials, the
U.S. delegation in Colombia this time included Julia Taft, the State
Department's top refugee official.

However, Colombian government resettlement and alternative development
plans - promoting crops including coffee and cotton - are still in
early planning stages.