U.S. DRUG-SPRAYING PLANE CRASHES

BOGOTA - A U.S. drug-fumigation plane flying in bad weather crashed Sunday
afternoon, killing the Costa Rican-American pilot, military officials
reported.

It was at least the fourth crash involving a U.S. antidrug plane this year,
and the seventh fatality.

Washington has poured about $2.5 billion into Colombia's campaign to
eradicate drugs. Part of the funding pays for a fleet of OV-10 planes to
spray the nation's coca crops.

On Sunday, an OV-10 assigned to the army's anti-narcotics unit crashed in
Catatumbo, in the northeastern Colombian state of Norte de Santander. It was
unclear whether the plane was shot at by hostile illegal groups on the
ground, which run the drug trade here.

''We're not discarding any possibility yet,'' army Gen. Jairo Duvan Pineda
told RCN Television. ``What we do know if there is very bad weather in the
area.''

Defense Minister Martha Lucia Ramirez said the pilot burned to death, a
spokeswoman told The Herald.

A pilot was injured Aug. 25 when his fumigation plane was shot at,
apparently by rebels. He made a crash landing and survived. In April, a
plane crashed in southwest Colombia, killing the American pilot.

Three American defense contractors remain hostage, held since Feb. 13 when
their single-engine surveillance plane crashed in C=FAcuta after
experiencing engine trouble. An American pilot and a Colombian army sergeant
were shot and killed after landing, and three others aboard were taken
hostage by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

In March, three more Americans crashed and died in a search mission to find
the hostages.

''Did the United States think that something like this would never happen,
or is it just that they don't care?'' Jo Rosano, mother of hostage Marc
Gonsalves, told The Herald on Sunday. ``I definitely think that the U.S.
should not be paying for these flights. They should keep the money where it
belongs, in the United States to stop the drugs from coming into the
country.''

According to the United Nations, the program works: Spraying has cut the
amount of coca acres here by 32 percent this year alone.