US VOWS TO WIPE OUT COCA CROPS

The United States has intensified its war on drugs by launching its biggest
round of aerial spraying in Colombia's coca growing heartland.

Colombia's new president, Alvaro Uribe, has given his full support to the
campaign to wipe out the harvest of coca leaves used to make cocaine. It
will involve using more crop dusters than previous campaigns for longer
hours with none of the restrictions that US officials say hampered
anti-drug operations in the past.

The crop dusters have begun spraying again in the south-west Guamuez
valley, the world's richest coca-producing region, in an attempt to destroy
up to 300,000 acres of coca this year, 30% more than was sprayed last year.

In that two-month onslaught, which ended in February last year, the US said
that it would concentrate on "industrial size" plots. American and
Colombian officials pledged that small farmers would be spared as long as
they had agreed to stop growing coca voluntarily, in exchange for modest
government benefits.

However, many small farms were sprayed and the operation ended prematurely
when Andres Pastrana, the president at the time, forbade some missions for
fear of further alienating peasants during delicate peace negotiations with
leftist rebels.

The result was that 80% of the crops sprayed in the province of Putumayo
were replanted, and cocaine trafficking to the US continued unabated.

The new round of crop spraying is likely to trigger fresh opposition from
Colombia's community leaders, who say the campaign impoverishes farmers and
kills off their legal crops. Environmental groups also claim the herbicide
used is dangerous to humans, a claim the US authorities deny.