MORE ANTI-DRUG AID SOUGHT AS RESCUERS HUNT SPY PLANE

BOGOTA, Colombia -- Washington's top anti-drug official pushed for increased
military aid yesterday to counter rebels in Colombia, where rescuers tried
to reach what might be the wreckage of a U.S. spy plane lost on an
anti-narcotics mission.

Visiting the world's No. 1 cocaine-producing country, Barry McCaffrey said
peace talks to end the nation's 35-year conflict would work only if
Colombia's security forces were strengthened against the threat of
"narco-guerrillas."

"The United States has paid inadequate attention to a serious and growing
emergency," he told reporters after meeting with President Andres Pastrana.

The United States should provide more battle helicopters and training for
Colombian military and police units, he said.

The missing de Havilland RC-7 plane, packed with radar and eavesdropping
equipment, apparently hit an uncharted mountain in bad weather, likely
killing the five U.S. soldiers and two Colombian air force officers on
board, McCaffrey said. It was reported missing Friday. The names of the
three American officers and two enlisted men based at Fort Bliss, in El
Paso, Texas, have not been released.

Low cloud cover and rugged terrain have prevented searchers from reaching
the site.

The plane dropped off radar screens as it circled over Putumayo, a major
drug-cultivation area dominated by the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia, or FARC. It was gathering intelligence on a counternarcotics
mission, the Army said.

The United States uses satellites, radar installations and overflights to
collect data on illegal coca and opium plots and traffickers' movements --
part of an aid program valued at nearly $300 million this year. Much of the
aid has provided crop-dusting planes and the armed helicopters that escort
them on fumigation missions.

Despite record spraying, those crops have doubled since 1996, with the most
explosive growth coming in areas where the FARC presence has limited
operations