Pubdate: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 Source: Washington Post (DC) Copyright: 2001 The Washington Post Company Contact: 1150 15th Street Northwest, Washington, DC 20071 Feedback: http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/edit/letters/letterform.htm Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ Author: Karen DeYoung, Washington Post Staff Writer COLOMBIAN GOVERNORS PROTEST CROP SPRAYING Bush administration officials held an elaborate press briefing yesterday to tout the interim success of U.S.-funded efforts to eliminate drug crops and boost development in southern Colombia, even as four Colombian politicians from the targeted region were touring Washington to criticize the programs. The elected governors from the four southern Colombian states most affected by the aerial spraying of herbicide on fields of coca and opium poppy charged that as much as half of an estimated 70,000 acres of crops destroyed since late December were legal food crops. "I speak for the campesinos, the small farmers," Ivan Gerardo Guerrero, of the southernmost state of Putumayo, said in an interview. "They are hurting people." At the same time, Guerrero said, the promised development aid has been slow in coming for those small farmers outside the herbicide-spraying area who have agreed to voluntary eradication. The U.S. officials, who appeared to have timed their briefing at least in part to offset the governors' visit this week, said Guerrero was mistaken. "Neither the governor of Putumayo nor anyone else in his government or this government has a good fix on what the actual kill ratio has been," said William Brownfield, deputy assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs. James Mack, deputy assistant secretary for international narcotics and law and anti-crime enforcement affairs, said the true figures will not be known until aerial photographs of the region have been analyzed, along with "ground-truthing" inspections by Colombian central government officials. Also present at yesterday's briefing, held at the State Department, were Paul Vaky, of the Justice Department's Criminal Division, and George Wachtenheim, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development program in Colombia. The governors, from the states of Cauca, Tolima and Narino, in addition to Putumayo, are in Washington under the auspices of the Latin America Working Group, a coalition of U.S. religious, human rights and development organizations, which oppose elements of U.S. policy on Colombia. They plan to meet with U.S. government representatives and members of Congress. "We agree with the [Colombian] government," said Floro Alberto Tunubala of Cauca, the first Colombian Indian elected to state office. "We are against illegal crops. The question is how to get rid of it." The governors, who complained that they were never consulted by President Andres Pastrana's government on the U.S.-backed anti-drug program, have proposed an end to crop spraying and increased involvement of local communities in widespread manual eradication and social development programs. "We're not only making condemnations, we have proposals," Tunubala said. The governors said that promised new security assistance from the Colombian military and police has been slow to materialize and that they were at the mercy of warring leftist guerrillas and right-wing paramilitary forces. In the absence of a government security presence, the guerrillas and paramilitary troops maintain armed control over most of the drug-growing territory in southern Colombia. - --- MAP posted-by: Jo-D