COLOMBIA'S CRISIS WORSENING - U.S. ANTI-DRUG CHIEF

LIMA - Top U.S. anti-drug official Gen. Barry McCaffrey said
Thursday that Colombia's crisis was worsening as a civil war between
the government of the world's leading cocaine producer and
drug-financed Marxist rebels spilled over national borders.

``The situation (in Colombia) looks as if it is continuing to get
worse rapidly,'' McCaffrey told Reuters Television at the end of a
one-day trip to Peru before he boarded a plane for Argentina.

On a lightning South American tour that has also included Brazil and
Bolivia, McCaffrey has urged the region's leaders to support Colombia
as it battles guerrilla groups, financed by the drug trade, who
operate in areas bordering five nations.

``I think it is clear this problem does spill over Colombia's
border,'' the retired general told foreign reporters.

Colombia, on the northwestern shoulder of South America, is adjacent
to Brazil; the Andean countries of Venezuela, Peru and Ecuador; and
Panama, on the Central American isthmus.

The producer of about 80 percent of the world's cocaine, Colombia has
seen an ``explosive'' rise in output of the white powder over the last
two years, according to McCaffrey.

The Bogota government also faces an upsurge in its three-decade-old
war as its struggles against an estimated 20,000 leftist rebels.

``There is significant evidence that it is having a detrimental impact
on Ecuador. ... Then there is, of course, the terrible impact of
(guerrillas) on Venezuela, kidnapping ranchers ... terrorizing
Panamanian citizens,'' McCaffrey said.

The Vietnam war veteran did not specify the effects of so-called
narco-guerrillas on Brazil and Peru. But drug experts say the two
nations are being sucked deeper into the illegal trade through
Colombia's heavy demand for coca leaf, the raw material for cocaine.

Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori, who met with McCaffrey Thursday,
has bolstered border patrols along his country's 1,000-mile (1,600-km)
border with Colombia to guard against any attacks from leftist
guerrillas and stem drug smuggling.

The U.S. government is increasingly concerned that chaos in war-torn
Colombia could destabilize a region that has made progress this decade
in economic and democratic reforms.

With the White House convinced that Colombia's drug and insurgency
problems cannot be divorced from each other, McCaffrey is pressing the
United States to triple its anti-drug aid for Latin America to $1
billion next year.

McCaffrey said the United States was eyeing new tools to destroy
illicit drugs, including herbicides that destroy them while leaving
legal cultivation unharmed.

``Microherbicides is a new initiative. If it turns out (to be
scientifically feasible and safe), it may be a tremendous tool to use,
and I hope we can look at it to include marijuana production in the
United States,'' he said.