UNITED NATIONS - LEFTIST REBELS COOPERATING TO REDUCE DRUG CROPS

BOGOTA, Colombia - 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.