GAO SAYS COLOMBIA WON'T MEET TARGET FOR DRUG-SPRAY PLAN

WASHINGTON (AP)--The U.S. may have to spend $230 million a year to keep
funding drug spraying programs that were supposed to be taken over by the
Colombian government, a congressional investigator told a Senate panel
Tuesday.

Colombia lacks the money and trained personnel to meet a 2006 target for
taking over responsibilities of flying and maintaining combat helicopters,
said Jess Ford, director of international affairs and trade for the General
Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress. He appeared before the
Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control.

The helicopters are used on drug-fighting missions, such as protecting spray
planes that fumigate fields of coca and opium, the raw material for cocaine
and heroin. Those fields are often protected by guerrillas, who partly fund
their insurgency through the drug trade.

The U.S. has given Colombia about $2.5 billion over four years, mostly to
buy, fly and maintain helicopters and spray planes. U.S. and Colombian
officials say the program has been successful, accounting for a 15% drop in
coca cultivation and 25% drop in opium cultivation last year.

Colombian Vice President Francisco Santos Calderon said he expected a 50%
drop of coca cultivation by the end of this year.

"Plan Colombia is working," he said, referring to the Colombian-U.S. plan to
cut drug production.

Santos said his government has made great advances against insurgents,
including the largest guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia, or FARC. But he said he fears those successes may make FARC "more
violent and more prone to get allies in the international community of
terrorists."

The State Department's top counternarcotics official, Paul E. Simons, said
that after initial setbacks in the program, Colombia was now expected to
meet its goals for reducing drug production.

"We believe we have turned a corner, particularly with the coca crop, in
Colombia," he said.

Army Gen. James T. Hill, commander of U.S. Southern Command, said recent
intelligence suggests that traffickers and insurgents have been hurt
financially, have had more difficulties in producing cocaine and are having
more fighters desert their units.

But Ford said the fumigation program has had mixed results. He said coca
cultivation rose annually from 1995 to 2001 and opium cultivation was
steady.

He described a series of impediments that limited the effectiveness of drug
aid, such as slow deliveries of helicopters and rules limiting where the
Colombian army's counternarcotics brigades can operate.

Some problems have been resolved, but others remain, he said. Billions of
dollars that were expected in aid from other countries never came.
Colombia's financial resources are limited as it continues its war against
guerrillas and paramilitaries. Also, Colombian police never agreed to a U.S.
embassy plan to have it take over the eradication program.

Ford said Colombia cannot sustain the program without U.S. money or
U.S.-funded contractors who maintain and fly the aircraft. The
$230-million-a-year estimate doesn't include additional costs, such as drug
interdiction programs and alternative development projects, he said.

The State and Defense departments "have still not developed estimates of
future program costs, defined their future roles in Colombia, identified a
proposed end state or determined how they plan to achieve it," he said.