COLOMBIA TO TEST HERBICIDE AGAINST COCA CROPS

BOGOTA, Colombia -- Bowing to demands from Washington, the Colombian
government has agreed to test a granular herbicide to kill coca crops,
despite public warnings from the chemical's American manufacturer against
its use in Colombia.

In the United States, the herbicide, tebuthiuron, is used mostly to control
weeds on railroad beds and under high-voltage lines far away from food
crops and people.

The Environmental Protection Agency requires a warning label on the
chemical that says it could contaminate ground water, a side effect
Colombian environmental officials fear could prevent peasants from growing
food where coca once grew.

U.S. officials have decided to concentrate more heavily on treating illegal
drug crops with chemicals, particularly in parts of southern Colombia under
the control of leftist guerrillas. Those guerrillas have fired on aircraft
attempting to spray herbicides on coca crops. But tebuthiuron can be
dropped instead of sprayed, making the task easier under such conditions.
The increase in fumigation comes at the expense of other measures to
control drug smuggling, a recent U.S. government investigation concluded.
American and Colombian police officials say that a granular herbicide will
be more effective in the battle to control drugs. For four years, they have
used a liquid toxin, glifosate, that has destroyed only 30 percent of the
plants sprayed. Despite the effort, the amount of coca in Colombia has yet
to decline, because eradication has prompted farmers to move and plant coca
elsewhere. Last year, Colombia became the world's leading coca grower.
American and Colombian authorities also contend that tebuthiuron offers
greater protection from gunfire for pilots, who must now fly low to
fumigate in the early morning hours, when winds are calm and temperatures
are lower. Tebuthiuron pellets can be dropped from higher altitudes in
virtually any weather, making pilots less vulnerable to gunfire, police
officials here said. Washington has lobbied Andean governments to accept
tebuthiuron for more than a decade, even though the chemical's
manufacturer, Dow AgroSciences, a subsidiary of Dow Chemical Co., strongly
opposes its use in Colombia. "Tebuthiuron is not labeled for use on any
crops in Colombia, and it is our desire that the product not be used for
coca eradication as well," the company said in a statement.

Tebuthiuron granules, sold commercially as Spike 20P, should be used
"carefully and in controlled situations," Dow cautioned, because "it can be
very risky in situations where terrain has slopes, rainfall is significant,
desirable plants are nearby and application is made under less than ideal
circumstances."

The warning is a rough description of conditions in Colombia's coca growing
regions. Dow, which faced years of lawsuits and public protest over the use
of its Agent Orange defoliant during the Vietnam war, said that if
approached, it would refuse to sell tebuthiuron for use in Colombia.
However, American officials note Dow's patent on the chemical has expired,
allowing others to make it legally.

Critics in Colombia, including Eduardo Verano, the nation's environmental
minister, say the health effects of tebuthiuron on farming areas are
unknown, and its use will only increase deforestation by pushing coca
growers deeper into forest.

"We need to reconsider the benefits of the chemical war," said Verano. "The
more you fumigate, the more the farmers plant. If you fumigate one hectare,
they'll grow coca on two more. How else do you explain the figures?"
American officials, backed by Colombian police, maintain the benefits
outweigh the environmental risks. The liquid herbicide used now, at a cost
of millions of dollars to the United States, has mostly been washed away in
the heavy rainfall of the Amazon, said Luiz Eduardo Parra, environmental
auditor of Colombia's anti-narcotics squad.

The American ambassador to Colombia, Curtis Kamman, said, "For a net
environmental positive effect, getting rid of coca is the best course for
Colombia." Research in Hawaii, Panama and Peru by the U.S. Agriculture
Department concluded that tebuthiuron would persist in Colombian soil for
less than a year.

Where once the United States concentrated on arresting drug barons,
smashing their organizations and seizing their wealth, the new strategy
involves greater fumigation and the interception of boats that may be
carrying drugs or chemicals needed to make cocaine from the coca.

In March, the State Department's acting assistant secretary of state for
international narcotics and law enforcement affairs, Rand Beers, outlined a
plan to increase fumigation in the southern provinces of Caqueta and
Putumayo, and asked Congress to pump $21 million more into the $30 million
counter-narcotics budget for Colombia this year.

He said that drug traffickers made a strategic decision to grow coca in
Southern Colombia because of American success in blocking Peruvian drug
planes that fly raw paste to Colombia where it it is made into cocaine. The
United States must seize the opportunity to prevent Colombian-grown coca
from taking its place, he told Congress.

But U.S. intelligence analysts say these statements exaggerate the victory
at intercepting drug planes, and that coca base is still reaching Colombia
from Bolivia and Peru. According to U.S. government figures, 78 percent of
the cocaine leaving Colombia is made from coca grown elsewhere. The General
Accounting Office, in a February 1998 report, concluded that a dramatic
increase in coca fumigation and drug interception in Colombia was
ill-planned, and shortchanged other anti-narcotics programs. While coca
fumigation of rebel-held areas is a subject of heated debate here, one
point is not in dispute.

The new strategy draws the Colombian military into the war on drugs in an
unprecedented way, while sharpening American attention on the main concern
of the Colombian military: its longstanding war with leftist rebels,
particularly the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, Latin
America's oldest and strongest insurgency.

The growing strength of the FARC rebels, who advocate nationalization of
Colombia's oil and other natural resources, has become a serious concern in
Washington.

Colombian officials say a turning point in their estimation of the rebels'
strength occurred two years ago, when coca farmers in Southern Colombia
battled security forces over government efforts to ration cement and
gasoline which are used to make coca paste. The demonstrations were taken
as a barometer of the growers' potential support for the rebels. "The FARC
is their party, their benefactor," said one American intelligence analyst.
"The kind of thing you want to do is go after the rebels' base of support."
But Col. Leonardo Gallego, counter-narcotics chief of the Colombian
National Police, denied that increased fumigation was part of any plan to
strike at the guerrillas. The "primary objective" was destroying coca and
recovering the environment destroyed through coca farming, he said.
"Whatever other goals are achieved through these operations is completely
secondary, and would be solely the result of any ties between guerrillas
and growers," said Gallego. Leonardo Garcia, nom de guerre of a member of
the FARC's international commission, vowed that intensive eradication in
the group's strongholds would lead to open warfare. U.S. intelligence
analysts estimate the FARC collects upwards of $100 million a year in
commissions from the drug business, but Garcia contended that the rebels
supported the growers out of political necessity alone. He acknowledged
that the guerrillas collect commissions from the drug trade but said they
also do so from other sectors of the economy, including banana and coffee
growers. "The campesino has the right to defend himself and to defend the
only thing he has to survive on -- his plot of land," Garcia said. "People
themselves go in search of weapons. So what can we do? We're going to
fight." Parra, of the Colombian police, argues that the damage that occurs
when peasants clear rain forest and mountain areas to grow coca and opium
poppies far outweigh whatever harm tebuthiuron may represent. But Verano,
the environmental minister, argues that the solution may be worse than the
problem, and suggests the U.S. government should control the export of
excessive amounts of chemicals like ether, acetone, cement and gasoline. It
takes some 155,000 tons of these materials to process coca in Colombia,
less than 6 percent of which were seized by Colombian police last year,
Verano said.

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski