REBELS MIGHT BE WILLING TO SWITCH SIDES IN DRUG WAR

SAN VICENTE DEL CAGUAN, Colombia -- Insurgents in Colombia say they
might be willing to switch sides in the drug war and actually work to
eradicate coca crops, even as one of their leaders on Thursday lashed
out at U.S. counter-drug programs here.

A spokesman for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC),
Camilo Lopez, told The Herald that insurgents could wipe out all coca
within four years.

Lopez said the insurgency has asked President Andres Pastrana to give
it direct control of one of Colombia's 1,072 townships -- an area
equivalent to a large U.S. county -- to demonstrate that rebels know
how to knock the wind out of the drug trade.

"We don't need coca crops to survive. We don't need a single peasant
farmer to grow coca," Lopez said.

Pastrana has not responded to the FARC plan, although he has said
publicly he believes he can engage insurgents in helping fight coca
production.

Colombia has become the world's No. 1 producer of cocaine, and a major
source of heroin to the United States. FARC rebels provide armed
protection to coca and poppy fields and narcotics processing
laboratories. Many experts are skeptical that the rebels would give up
their ties to the flourishing drug trade despite recent
pronouncements.

U.S. aid to Colombia is soaring to meet the rising drug
threat.

Coca eradication was a subject of discussion when a mid-level State
Department envoy met with a FARC commander in San Jose, Costa Rica,
Dec. 13-14, U.S. diplomats say.

In a speech at a ceremony to launch peace talks here Thursday, FARC
rebel commander Joaquin Gomez decried rising U.S. anti-drug assistance
as "a Trojan horse" that he said is a smoke screen for
counter-insurgency efforts.

"U.S. leaders spend huge sums of money through the Colombian security
forces to harm civilians with bombings, strafings and indiscriminate
fumigation, wiping out fields and barnyard animals and leaving a good
part of the land sterile," he said.

Gomez cited what he said was the U.S. financing of a new
counter-narcotics battalion in the town of Barranco Colorado, in
Guaviare state, whose true aim is "to maintain a cordon around the
[FARC] secretariat."

Lopez, the spokesman, said FARC rebels would shoot at U.S. advisors as
well as Colombian police they might find in the battalion.

"If U.S. advisors come and they are in the battalion, we aren't going
to know who is a gringo and who isn't during combat. We're not going
to ask for identity documents. . . . Whoever dies, dies," he said.

Lopez said the FARC would switch sides in the drug war only if foreign
governments offer large-scale development and anti-poverty assistance
in Colombian drug-growing areas, and if all U.S.-financed aerial
fumigation efforts are halted.

Gomez echoed that "profound economic and social" forces push farmers
into coca, and the problem "must be dealt with without
repression."

Pastrana has mounted an investment program, called the Colombia Plan,
to seek foreign help for massive development in the eastern plains,
where most coca is grown.