U.S. IS STEPPING UP DRIVE TO DESTROY COCA IN COLOMBIA

ROSAL, Colombia - With the full support of the Colombian president, the
United States has begun what American officials say will be the biggest and
most aggressive effort yet to wipe out coca growing.

A round of aerial spraying to kill Colombia's mammoth drug crops, which
resumed here a month ago, is part of a new phase in the war on drugs that
hopes to reverse years of setbacks as coca has continued to spread
drastically. American officials said that if the expanded program was
sustained, it could at last make substantial inroads against Colombia's
coca growing.

With the approval of Colombia's new president, Alvaro Uribe, the American
plan calls for more crop dusters operating more hours and with none of the
restrictions that officials say hampered spraying programs in the past.

Here in the Guamuez Valley, the world's richest coca-producing region, the
effects are clear.

The crop dusters have returned, flying low and leaving a fine mist of gray
spray in Colombia's coca-growing heartland. Fields of brown, withering coca
bushes, whose leaves are used to make cocaine, remain in their wake.

"Look at all this - it was all fumigated," complained one farmer, Diomar
Montenegro, 49, as he stood in a field of wilting coca bushes in this
hamlet in southern Colombia. "I cannot do this anymore. They have put me
out in the street."

It is a refrain American officials are happy to hear. In the last
large-scale spraying of this region, a two-month onslaught that ended in
February of last year, the United States said it would concentrate on
"industrial size" plots.

American and Colombian officials pledged that small farmers would be spared
if they agreed to stop growing coca voluntarily in exchange for modest
government benefits.

In reality, many small farms were sprayed. But the spraying ended earlier
than American officials had hoped, because Andres Pastrana, then the
president, forbade some missions for fear of further alienating peasants in
the midst of delicate peace negotiations with leftist rebels.

The result was that 80 percent of the crops sprayed in this province,
Putumayo, were replanted, and cocaine trafficking to the United States
continued unabated.

Now, President Uribe is allowing United States officials to plan missions
wherever and whenever they see fit, and there is no pretext that small
farmers will not be hit. American planners say they intend to cover as much
acreage with defoliant as possible to stop the replanting of coca.

"What keeps them from going back to growing coca is the spray plane, and
only the spray plane," said an official at the American Embassy who works
on the antidrug programs. "The coca fields are enormous and there are a lot
of different owners, and you just have to rub it all out. That is the only
way you are going to make this work."

The goal, American officials say, is to kill up to 300,000 acres of coca
this year, 30 percent more than was sprayed last year. With more crop
dusters arriving, - American officials say the fleet will increase from 12
to 22 by next spring - the State Department hopes to double the acreage
sprayed next year, killing so much coca that replanting cannot keep up.

But despite the rosy predictions, drug policy analysts and some lawmakers
in Washington warn that the intensified program could just cause coca
planting to spread to a wider area. That phenomenon has already taken hold
after a decade of American-backed spraying.

"Fumigation has an effect, but we would argue it's an effect of
displacement," said Klaus Nyholm, who oversees the United Nations Drug
Control Program's office in Colombia. "The next question is where will the
coca go from here?"

Indeed, though the United States has spent $1.7 billion since 1999 in
Colombia to stamp out drugs, the amount of coca in Colombia has increased
25 percent from 2000 to 2001, according to American estimates based on
images from satellites and projections by analysts.

United Nations figures actually show a small decrease in coca cultivation
in that period, a discrepancy due to the different satellite-based methods
used to ascertain the size of plantations. But the United Nations also says
that coca plantings large enough to be measured were found in 22 of
Colombia's 32 provinces in 2001, up from 12 provinces in 1999.

Reports this year by the General Accounting Office, the research arm of the
United States Congress, and the State Department have concluded that
American-financed efforts to wean farmers off coca by offering them
benefits had also failed.

In many cases the Colombian government failed to deliver the benefits
promised to farmers, while many farmers who pledged to eradicate their coca
simply did not comply.

"After nearly $2 billion, our policy in Colombia has accomplished little,"
said Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who is chairman of the
foreign operations subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee and who has
criticized American policy toward Colombia.

Community leaders here say aerial spraying has further impoverished people
who turned to coca because it was the only viable moneymaking option.
Farmers also say the spraying has caused a scarcity of food, since their
legal crops, planted alongside coca, also die in spraying operations.

Furthermore, though the United States contends that the herbicide used here
is safe, warning labels on the product caution against using it near people
and say it can cause vomiting and other ailments.

The spraying has raised the concerns of some environmental groups.

"I'm worried because it is absolutely indiscriminate," said Nancy Sanchez,
a human rights advocate who is working with the provincial health
department to determine if there are any negative effects from spraying.
"There has been no real evaluation of the effects of fumigation."

The State Department is expected to submit a report to Congress on
Wednesday on the potential health effects of the spraying. Under a
provision sponsored by Senator Leahy, Congress has required that the
department, in consultation with the Environmental Protection Agency,
certify that the use of the pesticide does "not pose unreasonable risks or
adverse effects to humans or the environment."

American officials involved with the program vow not to retreat, saying
that the fact of the matter is that coca farmers are engaged in an illegal
activity. The new phase is evident on any given sunny day, when as many as
a dozen planes spray up to 3,700 rolling acres. So far, since spraying
began in this province on July 31, about 45,000 acres of coca has been hit,
about a quarter of what has been sprayed nationwide since the start of the
year.

"At first, it looks like nothing has been dropped," said Blanca Lopez, 31,
whose coca was sprayed two weeks ago. "But then you go and see the effects.
The leaves start to turn and are just left black."

Now her field is filled with dry, dying stalks of coca, and she worries
about her plantains, bananas, yucca and other crops.

"This is a disaster," she said. "Now we do not know what we are going to do."