COLOMBIA COCAINE LAB PUT OUT OF BUSINESS

Coordinated Strike Deals Another Blow To Illicit Drug Trade

CUMBITARA, Colombia - Seven helicopter gunships skirted the steep
mountainsides, then quickly descended on a cocaine lab, marked by a
smoke grenade thrown by one of the raiders.

The heavily armed anti-narcotics police jumped from the hovering
craft, accompanied by an informant wearing a ski mask.

Associated Press journalists accompanied the officers on the lightning
raid Saturday, allowing them to see firsthand the type of dangerous
operation that has put a crimp in Colombia's cocaine production.

So far this year, raids have destroyed 100 labs that convert coca
paste - made from the leaves of the coca bush - into cocaine, said
Col. Alvaro Velandia, deputy director of Colombia's anti-narcotics
police.

Saturday's raid in the mountains of southwestern Colombia showed that
precise intelligence and swift action are needed to destroy the drug
labs, often located in remote, rugged regions teeming with Marxist
rebels.

After flying over vast coca fields, the U.S.-made helicopters - three
Black hawks and four Hueys - circled the cocaine-producing complex.
One helicopter, carrying an AP reporter, an AP photographer and
police, banked into the landing zone and hovered four feet from the
ground. The door gunner made a hand signal, ordering those aboard to
jump. The journalists and the raiders leapt to the ground. The police
quickly fanned out, assault rifles at the ready.

"We are in the cocaine empire of the FARC," Velandia declared as he
surveyed the scene. FARC, an acronym for Colombia's bigger rebel group
- - the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia - is one of the main
players in Colombia's drug trade.

The 30 raiders noticed some earth recently had been overturned. They
found buried barrels holding 44 pounds of coca base. The informant,
who will be paid by police, looked on with satisfaction.

"I used to work here," he told the AP. "But I left because I had not
been paid in 10 months. We were producing 3,306 pounds of cocaine
every eight days."

Other policemen, meanwhile, moved down a slippery, steep slope, and
found dozens of barrels of chemicals and electrical cables. Inside a
hut, food was still cooking in a kitchen.

Moving deeper into the now-abandoned complex, the policemen found
hidden in a gorge the lab that converted the coca paste into pure
cocaine. Inside, they found 772 pounds of cocaine.

Suddenly, they were surprised by the ringing of a cell phone. A member
of the Colombian inspector general's office found the phone and answered.

"Did you get away? Did you get away," a voice on the other end asked
anxiously, before the caller realized he was not talking to a drug
worker and hung up.

The officers also discovered an abandoned gold mine. Inside was a
cocaine drying chamber.

All the while, a police explosives expert was lining the drug lab and
the gold mine with charges. The police wanted to get in and out fast,
before rebels of the FARC's 29th Front could arrive to
counterattack.

The police stood back and the explosives went off. Pieces of the drug
lab flew high into the air. The gold mine collapsed.

Members of the raiding party clambered back into the helicopters. One
of the door gunners spotted a muzzle flash from the ground and opened
fire. A cascade of machine-gun shell casings danced off the floor of
the chopper and tumbled out the door, as the chopper clattered back to
base at Pasto city where the raiders began planning a fresh operation.