COLOMBIA TARGETS DRUG CROPS

Effort Said Tied To Anti-Rebel Fight

ARAUCA, Colombia -- President Alvaro Uribe, briefly governing from one of
the most violent corners of his country, said yesterday a massive aerial
drug eradication campaign would begin in the region in three weeks.

Uribe, promising to intensify his US-backed offensives against Marxist
rebels and cocaine trafficking, declared, "We will not permit these
guerrillas to have sanctuary, neither here, nor at the end of the Earth."

"They [the rebels] still feel powerful because they have cash from drugs.
But to defeat them we must cut off the drug money. This is a necessity,"
Uribe said Speaking to citizens in the steamy lowland region, which is at
the heart of his national security campaign, Uribe said his forces would
continue to squeeze guerrillas out of their hiding places and end four
decades of warfare.

He has based his government in the offices of an army general in Arauca
since Tuesday to show he has control across the nation nearly a year after
taking office. He was elected on promises to make Latin America's most
violent nation safe.

The president was expected to return to the capital Bogota by this morning.

In a sign of the violence, police reported a grenade blast yesterday that
killed a woman and injured seven other people in the nearby municipality of
Saravena, where US special forces are training Colombian troops in
counterinsurgency techniques.

Marxist rebels blew up an electric tower near Saravena on Wednesday,
knocking out power in the province and pushing the capital onto emergency
generators.

The United States, which has poured about $2 billion into Colombia's war on
drugs, has strongly supported Uribe's tough stand against outlawed armies,
which Washington brands "terrorists." US officials also applaud his aerial
spraying campaign, the most intense in the history of the US-backed war on
drugs.

Uribe tried to rally families in the region behind the spraying,
unprecedented in Arauca, which often kills food crops and is opposed by
local community associations.

Thousands of soldiers and police locked down Arauca to prevent a repeat of a
car bomb attack the last time Uribe visited in October, when two police
officers were killed and 11 other people were wounded.

Earlier yesterday he visited a woman injured in the blast and several
wounded soldiers, many of whom had been protecting the oil-rich province
against guerrilla ambush. The nearby Cano Limon oilfield, operated by Los
Angeles based Occidental Petroleum Corp , is a favorite rebel target.

Locals in Arauca said they were impressed by Uribe's visit, which marked the
first time in recent memory that a Colombian president has moved his
government, including Cabinet ministers and military commanders, to a
conflict zone.

"It's an historic act," said housewife Nelsa Baqueno, adding, "The good
thing is that he learns about our problems."