COLOMBIA'S COCA UP, U.S. SAYS

WASHINGTON, March 8 (Reuters) -- The area of Colombia planted with coca
grew 24.7 percent last year, the White House said today, a finding that
highlights the weakness of a counternarcotics effort that has cost the
United States $1 billion over the past two years. One-third of the increase
came from the inclusion of an area that was not surveyed in 2000 because of
cloud cover.

Last year crops of coca, the leaf used to make cocaine, covered 419,000
acres in Colombia, the largest producer of the drug, the White House said,
basing its estimates on satellite images.

"We recognize that our efforts to date have not yet produced the results we
had hoped to achieve," the report said. The figures underscore the need for
sustained American antidrug aid, it added.

Last week the Colombian government gave lower figures for the coca crops,
which are mostly in southern Colombia. It put total coca cultivation at
357,818 acres on Nov. 1, 2001, down from 403,487 acres on Aug. 31, 2000.

The security environment in Colombia, where leftist guerrillas and rightist
paramilitary militias are involved in the drug trade, has made it difficult
to combat drugs, the White House said.

The Bush administration has continued a drug-eradication strategy begun by
its predecessor and has requested more money to train Colombian troops for
counterinsurgency operations.

Colombia is by far the largest producer of cocaine in the world and
supplies more than 80 percent of the drug sold in the United States, the
largest market for cocaine.