U.S. DELEGATION VISITS COLOMBIA, WHERE COCAINE PRODUCTION IS UP

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) As new figures showed a 20 percent rise in
Colombian cocaine production, a high-level U.S. delegation met Monday
with leaders of this turbulent nation to discuss a drug-fighting aid
package.

The visit was led by Thomas Pickering, the State Department's
third-ranking official. It came as the U.S. Congress was opening
debate on the proposed two-year, $1.6 billion aid package that would
dramatically escalate the war on drugs in Colombia.

Primarily a military aid plan, the package includes 63 helicopters and
the training and equipping of two new army counter-drug battalions. It
aims to give Colombia the firepower, mobility and intelligence to
defeat leftist rebels who protect drug crops.

The Andean country solidified its place last year as the world's
principal source of cocaine, according to new figures compiled by the
CIA.

Cultivation of coca, the drug's raw material, increased 20 percent in
Colombia last year, the figures said. Land used for the drug totaled
465 square miles, up from 393 square miles in 1998, according to the
estimates provided to The Associated Press.

Coca cultivation has long been widespread in neighboring South
American countries too. But due largely to Colombia's instability
nearly half the country is controlled by leftist rebels and their
paramilitary foes, both largely financed by the drug trade traffickers
have moved the bulk of coca cultivation here since the mid-1990s.

As a result, acreage devoted to the shiny green coca bush dropped in
neighboring Peru from 197 to 150 square miles from 1998 to 1999 and in
Bolivia from 147 to 85 square miles, the new figures show.

Overall, estimated cocaine production in the region was down over the
period from 825 to 765 metric tons, the CIA believes.

The Clinton Administration's aid package would permit an army push
this year into guerrilla-dominated southern jungles, where Colombian
officials say coca cultivation has tripled in the past two years.
U.S.-trained troops would provide ground and air protection while
planes spray poisons on the crops, killing them from above.

Armed resistance could come from the leftist Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia the guerrilla group that dominates the countryside
of southern Putumayo state, taxes the coca and protects drug
laboratories and clandestine airstrips.

Also, Colombia's defense minister is expecting violent peasant
protests. Tens of thousands of peasants in Putumayo many of them
internal refugees of the country's nearly 36-year civil conflict
depend on coca for their livelihood.

President Andres Pastrana said in an interview with The Associated
Press last week that his government expects thousands of those
peasants to be displaced once the cocaine crops are killed. Some will
have to be relocated.

The proposed U.S. aid package includes $176 million for resettling
uprooted peasants and helping them find a legal way to make a living.
Apart from the usual counter-narcotics and military officials, the
U.S. delegation in Colombia this time included Julia Taft, the State
Department's top refugee official.

However, Colombian government resettlement and alternative development
plans promoting crops including coffee and cotton are still in early
planning stages.