COLOMBIAN CHIEF SEES TROPHIES OF DRUG WAR

MIAMI . If it weren't for the labels on the rubbish, it would have seemed
as if Colombian President Andres Pastrana was touring a junkyard on Monday
morning.

An airplane engine sat in one corner, a few feet from a sack of pumice rock
and an iron piling once welded on a ship's deck. All were strewn about a
U.S. Customs warehouse in the Port of Miami. The objects, once used to
smuggle drugs into Miami, were now trophies for the federal officials
showing Pastrana the fruits of their labor fighting drugs on this side of
the Caribbean.

Pastrana was pleased to learn that many of those seizures did not come from
his country -- at least not directly. Many of the objects on display were
from Haitian ships caught in the Miami River, among them roof tiles from
Venezuela and wooden pallets from Brazil, countries that have become
transshipment points for Colombian cocaine.

"It seems it has been a long time they caught a shipment from Colombia,"
Pastrana said, referring to his country's successes in clamping down
shipments headed to the United States.

Pastrana was in Miami on his way to Colombia after shuttling for the past
five days between Washington and New York, talking about his country's
ongoing fight with drug trafficking and the violence associated with it. He
met with President George Bush, key congressional leaders, Attorney General
John Ashcroft and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Then he headed to the
United Nations general assembly.

He urged leaders throughout his trip to help him generate jobs and keep
attacking the drug profits that finance terrorist groups in his country.
For the past 40 years, Colombia has been involved in guerrilla war between
leftist rebels, the government and, in the last 10 years, right-wing
paramilitary guerrillas.

Over the last decade, the conflict has exploded as armed groups such as the
leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, and the rightist
United Self Defenses of Colombia, or AUC, began profiting from the drug
crops that grow in the areas they control.

"Narcotrafficking is the largest financial resource of terrorism," Pastrana
said, pointing out how Osama bin Laden's group profits from the opium
trade. "Narcotraffickers, those are the ones who are financing violence in
my country and abroad."