COLOMBIA REBELS SAID TO AID U.N.

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- Leftist rebels who make millions of dollars off
the cocaine trade are cooperating with a $6 million U.N. project to wean
peasants off illegal drug crops, a U.N. anti-narcotics official said.

The announcement on Thursday contrasted with recent visits by U.S.
officials, who revealed plans to beef up Colombia's military in hopes of
forcibly eradicating illegal plantations in guerrilla-held regions.

``The idea is to give more carrot, and not just the stick,'' Klaus Nyholm,
director of the Colombia office of the U.N. Drug Control Program, said at a
news conference.

Colombia is the world's No. 1 source of cocaine, and its production of coca
- -- the plant used to make it -- has doubled since 1996.

Gen. Charles Wilhelm, the top U.S. military commander in Latin America, on
Wednesday toured a southern town where U.S. assistance is improving
Colombia's capacity to attack drug traffickers and rebels on rivers.

White House drug czar Gen. Barry McCaffrey visited a week ago, plugging a
nearly $1 billion increase in U.S. anti-narcotics aid for the Andes, much
of it for Colombia's police and military.

Next Tuesday, the highest level U.S. diplomatic mission to visit Colombia
in years will call on President Andres Pastrana to ask about his strategy
for dealing with the leftist insurgency and a faltering war on drugs.
Leading the mission will be Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering, a
former ambassador to El Salvador.

While welcoming increased U.S. military aid, the Colombian president has
urged a shift in anti-narcotics policy toward crop substitution, also known
as ``alternative development.''

Nyholm said the U.N. crop substitution project began a month ago inside a
southern region controlled by the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia, or FARC.

Since Pastrana pulled out all troops and soldiers from the region last year
in order to spur peace talks, military officials say the area has become a
haven for drug traffickers. Nyholm claimed ``drug cultivation has not
increased or decreased since the FARC took control.''

The rebel group admits that it finances its 35-year insurgency in part by
taxing the illegal plantations.

The U.N. program will provide credits or seeds to about 5,000 local farmers
who subsist off illegal plots of coca and will include road-paving projects
to improve the peasants' access to distant markets, Nyholm said.

Poor farmers will be encouraged to graze cattle, or plant rubber trees or
bananas under the project financed by the United Nations and the Colombian
government.