COCA PRODUCTION RISES IN COLOMBIA DESPITE RECORD ERADICATION

BOGOTA, Colombia Colombia's coca crop increased by 8 percent last year
despite a U.S.-backed eradication campaign that was the largest in history,
U.N. drug officials said Tuesday.

Production of the plant used to make cocaine increased to 330 square miles
in 2005 even as authorities sprayed coca fields totaling 25 times the size
of Manhatten according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.

The U.N. findings follow an April report by the U.S. Office of National
Drug Control Policy that reported a 28 percent increase in Colombia's coca
production from 2004 to 2005, though that was partly due to a near doubling
of the area surveyed.

Taken together, the reports are the strongest evidence yet that a
cornerstone of the U.S.-led war on drugs the aerial fumigation of coca
fields is failing to meet its goal of halving coca production in the Andes.

The anti-drug strategy known as Plan Colombia received about $4 billion in
U.S. funding since 2000.

Colombia, the world's largest cocaine producer, is believed to be the
source of 90 percent of the cocaine consumed in the United States.

The biggest increases were observed in the largely uninhabited jungles near
Colombia's borders with Venezuela and Ecuador, the U.N. report said.

Key members of the U.S. Congress and growing numbers of Colombians have
suggested it may be time to halt the potentially environmentally harmful
spraying.

Maria Costa, executive director of the U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime, said
the United States and Europe must curb their appetite for cocaine and
increase support for alternative crop development programs in South America.

"Our aid efforts need to be multiplied at least tenfold in order to reach
all impoverished farmers who need support," he said.