U.S. BLACK HAWKS UP, FLYING IN COLOMBIA'S WAR ON DRUGS

NEIVA, Colombia -- As a crop-duster darted between mountain peaks in
search of bright red poppy fields Friday, three U.S.-supplied Black
Hawk helicopters hovered nearby, their guns trained on the tree line.

Lethal new weapons in Colombia's war on drugs, the choppers were sent
to this South American nation in November as part of a U.S. military
aid package. The helicopters ran their first anti-narcotics mission on
Friday.

"With these Black Hawks, the drug traffickers will tremble," said Gen.
Rosso Jose Serrano, chief of Colombia's national police force.

Three more Black Hawks are scheduled to arrive from the United States
in March. In the meantime, the U.S. Congress is debating President
Clinton's two-year, $1.6 billion aid proposal for Colombia that
includes 30 additional Black Hawks and 32 upgraded "Super-Huey" choppers.

Officials in both Washington and Bogota acknowledge that the need for
sophisticated aircraft reflects the growing dangers in Colombia's
controversial, five-year effort to eradicate opium poppies and coca
leaves, the raw materials for heroin and cocaine. Attacks against
spray planes and escort choppers have jumped dramatically in the past
year.

As police pilots swoop low over the narcotics crops, they often draw
fire from traffickers as well as Marxist guerrillas, who fund their
36-year-old war against the government, in part, with drug-protection
money.

Equipped with 50-caliber machine guns and infrared sensors to spot the
enemy on the ground, the Black Hawks provide a menacing escort for the
unarmed crop-dusters.

Unlike Colombia's aging fleet of Vietnam War-era Huey helicopters, the
Black Hawks can fly at altitudes of up to 20,000 feet. That makes them
more effective during raids on opium poppies, which grow high in the
Andes Mountains of western Colombia.

"I think air power will mean the difference in the war," said
Colombian Defense Minister Luis Fernando Ramirez.

In the last month, drug traffickers have shot at police pilots with
rocket-propelled grenades on eight occasions, Ramirez said during an
interview in Neiva, the capital of Huila state, which is infested with
poppies.

"We're seeing more and more attacks from the ground when the planes
come in to fumigate," he said.

Since the mid-1990s, dozens of pilots and helicopter crew members have
been killed.

"These operations are very difficult," said Serrano, the Colombian
police chief. "It's suicidal."

It's also unclear whether the fumigation strategy works.

Last year, police fumigated 20,000 acres of poppies and 106,000 acres
of coca. Yet farmers often replanted the crops almost
immediately.

As a result, Colombia produced 6.5 metric tons of heroin and 435
metric tons of cocaine in 1999. The South American country remains the
United States' principle source for both drugs, according to the U.S.
Drug Enforcement Administration.

By contrast, Ramirez said, a new policy by the Colombian air force to
interdict drug aircraft has paid off. In the past two years, 36 drug
flights have been forced down, and six planes have been shot out of
the sky, he said.

Ramirez likes the Colombian policy, because it focuses on high-level
drug traffickers rather than poor farmers, who often grow drug crops
just to survive

"It's less confrontational with local farmers and directly hurts the
wholesaler," Ramirez said.