HYDE SAYS WAR ON DRUGS 'ADRIFT'

The chairman of the House International Relations Committee says the
Bush administration is claiming a "premature victory" in the war
against Colombian drug traffickers and diverting its focus to the Middle East.

"I am concerned our efforts to fight the scourge of illegal narcotics
seem to be adrift in our hemisphere," said Rep. Henry J. Hyde,
Illinois Republican. "After five years of Plan Colombia, we are
finally seeing success in our war on drugs.

"Unfortunately, these positive results seem to have lulled the
administration into a false sense of security, causing it to claim
premature victory in Colombia and turn its attention to the Middle
East and elsewhere," Mr. Hyde said. "By doing this, it is likely to
turn a winning hand into a losing one."

Plan Colombia is a multibillion-dollar anti-drug initiative that
includes interdiction efforts and an aerial fumigation program to
eradicate coca, the source of cocaine.

Mr. Hyde's comments are contained in a letter last week to Rep. Dan
Burton, Indiana Republican and chairman of the International
Relations Western Hemisphere subcommittee. Mr. Burton was the key
sponsor of a war on terror appropriations amendment that secured
$26.3 million in emergency funds to assist in Colombia's war against
narco-terrorists.

Last month, senior Colombian police and navy officials told The
Washington Times that a Bush administration decision to divert money
for Colombian drug interdiction and eradication programs to the war
on terrorism had opened up the southern U.S. border to a new flood of
heroin and cocaine.

Colombia is the source of about 90 percent of the cocaine that ends
up each year in the United States, as well as a majority of the heroin.

In the past three years, a senior congressional aide said, homeland
security demands in the United States have resulted in a 70 percent
reduction in the aircraft available to the Colombian and U.S. navies
for interdiction efforts. Many of the surveillance planes were
grounded because of wing-structure problems, and 23 aircraft,
including spray planes and helicopters, were either shot down by
smugglers or crashed, the aide said.

Mr. Hyde said that unless the administration provides new and
replacement counterdrug aircraft and equipment, it will allow the
Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, to
consolidate its hold on the drug trade and continue to destabilize the nation.

He said it was time for the administration to recommit to "providing
our closest ally in South America the right equipment and training to
allow them a chance to prevail against the narcoterrorism that also
threatens us.

"I hope someone in the administration is listening; our drug czar is
clearly not," he said.

For two years, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has asked the
administration for funds to replace spray planes and for assistance
in rebuilding his military and police. His requests were not included
in the 2006 foreign aid bill and do not appear in the
administration's 2007 request.

In November, the Government Accountability Office questioned the
government's ability to sustain interdiction operations in the
Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico and the eastern Pacific Ocean,
saying the availability of aircraft and other key assets was
declining. It said interdiction flight hours declined from 6,860 in
2000 to 2,940 in 2005.