U.S. PROMOTION OF LEGAL CROPS FAILS TO STEM COLOMBIA'S COCA

WASHINGTON, March 29 -- The State Department has concluded that its
strategy to persuade peasant farmers in Colombia to replace their coca
fields with legal crops is failing, administration officials said today.

The alternative development strategy, for which Congress has allocated more
than $50 million, has suffered from a lack of security in the coca-growing
regions, a lack of follow-up by the Colombian government, and the
difficulty of finding crops that can thrive in areas with poor soil, the
officials said.

The United States has invested nearly $2 billion since 2000 to support the
country's armed forces, fumigate drug crops and provide economic options to
farmers in Colombia and its neighbors. The American ambassador to Colombia,
Anne Patterson, ordered a review of the program late last year.

"They have concluded that we need to do stuff differently," said a senior
State Department official. Asked if that meant rethinking the entire
approach, the official replied, "Absolutely."

The State Department review of the program, which was first reported Friday
in The Los Angeles Times, concluded that many farmers had no intention of
destroying their crops. The federal government estimated this month that
coca cultivation in Colombia surged by nearly 25 percent last year, to
419,000 acres, despite fumigation, new military aid and the crop
substitution campaign.

The crop substitution effort has been focused in the hardscrabble southern
provinces of Putumayo and Caqueta, where about 40,000 peasant growers
signed an eradication pact in return for government aid.

Under the program, Colombia is to provide seed for alternative crops or
other immediate aid, and farmers are obliged to eradicate their coca fields
by July. The United States Agency for International Development has pledged
to provide incentives, training and money for infrastructure projects.

The General Accounting Office reported last month that the strategy "faces
serious obstacles." Among them, it cited a weak Colombian development
agency with uncertain financing and the lack of a mechanism to ensure
farmers' compliance.

Mark Schneider, the development agency's chief for Latin America in the
Clinton administration, said the strategy was doomed unless the Colombian
government could establish a credible presence and provide security in a
region that is overrun by leftist rebels and drug traffickers.

Karen Hasbert, the development agency's deputy assistant administrator for
Latin America, said it was too early to judge whether the alternative
development strategy had failed. The program has only been in effect since
last May, she said, and "it's impossible to create an alternative economy"
in that time.