COLOMBIAN REBELS OFFER TO HELP WIPE OUT DRUG CROPS

BOGOTA, - Colombia's top rebel group, accused of
funding its long-running war with the proceeds of narcotics, has
pledged to back efforts to wipe out drug plantations if the government
pays peasants to switch to other crops.

Colombia's U.S.-backed anti-narcotics policy has centered mainly on
spraying plantations of opium poppies and coca leaf -- the raw
material for cocaine -- from the air with herbicides, often destroying
subsistence crops of beans, plantains and maize.

U.S. officials last month met representatives of the Marxist
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which Washington dubs a
"terrorist" organisation and a "narco-insurgency", and raised the
prospect of U.S. aid to fund crop substitution.

Colombia produces about 80 percent of the world's cocaine and supplies
about 60 percent of the high-grade heroin sold on U.S. streets.

"We said to the government, 'draw up a plan that will make it possible
to eradicate coca leaf plantations on the basis of changing that crop
for another'," FARC supreme commander Manuel "Sureshot" Marulanda said
in an interview published in this week's edition of the political
magazine Semana.

"If international organisations want to trust in us then they can give
us money and we will eradicate coca in one municipality," he added,
outlining ideas for a pilot programme for crop substitution to be
administered by the FARC.

Marulanda suggested rice, cocoa and cotton as alternatives, ensuring a
cash income for thousands of dirt poor farmers.

At present the price paid to peasants for a kilogram (2.2 pounds) of
cocaine base -- which must be further refined to turn it into pure
cocaine -- is around $800. But after paying for chemicals and other
products used in the process the peasant is left with about $150 profit.

Many of the peasants who grow coca leaf have fled violence in other
parts of the country. Poor infrastructure and low prices paid for
other produce would make it impossible for them to survive otherwise.

The FARC, the hemisphere's oldest and largest rebel army, admits
levying a tax on the sale of cocaine base but denies wholesale drug
trafficking or protecting drug laboratories.

Government security forces, however, estimate the FARC earns about
$790 million per year, largely from trafficking but also from kidnap
ransoms and extortion payments.

In a speech to mark the official launch of peace talks with President
Andres Pastrana on Jan. 7, Marulanda accused the United States of
using the FARC's alleged ties to the drug trade as a "hobby horse" to
justify wider intervention in Colombia's counter-insurgency efforts.

Late last year, the U.S. Congress earmarked more than $290 million in
anti-drugs aid for Colombia over the next three years. Many political
analysts say much of that will inevitably be used against Colombia's
estimated 15,000 guerrillas, who now control up to half the country,
as Washington blurs the lines between the war on drugs and insurgents.

"(Colombia's anti-drug efforts) cannot be based on shooting people,
dropping bombs on them, fumigating their plots and killing their farm
animals," Marulanda said, in reference to what the FARC sees as a
repressive U.S.-backed drug policy.

In its three-year anti-drugs package, the United States is offering
about $15 million a year for crop substitution but the bulk is still
for the purchase of weaponry and helicopters to destroy drug
plantations.