Source: Associated Press 
Pubdate: Sun, 16 Aug 1998
Author: Jared Kotler

DRUG ERADICATION PROGRAM FAILS

BOGOTA -- The aerial crop-spraying program favored by the United States to
reduce Colombian cocaine and heroin production has failed, the new
environment minister said in an interview published Sunday.

``The cultivated areas have increased, which demonstrates that fumigation
hasn't worked,'' Juan Mayr, a renowned conservationist, was quoted by
Bogota's El Tiempo newspaper as saying.

Mayr said he would seek alternatives to spraying coca and opium crops with
herbicides, which environmentalists say endanger humans and animals and
threaten the Amazon rain forest.

Though he didn't say whether he favored scrapping the current program
altogether, Mayr added: ``We can't permanently fumigate the country.''

Currently, the herbicide glyphosate is used in the spraying. U.S. officials
favor changing to the more toxic tebuthiuron because it is granular, can be
dropped from higher altitudes and dissolves less readily.

Last year, a record 160 square miles of coca were sprayed but coca
cultivation nevertheless increased to 307 square miles, according to the
United States.

TurboThrush prop planes, their pilots contracted by Washington and
including Americans, carry out the spraying in areas dominated by leftist
rebels, who periodically fire on the aircraft and the U.S.-donated
helicopter gunships that escort them.

The rebels levy taxes on the drug crop cultivation and production, using
the proceeds to fund their war.

President Andres Pastrana, who took office Aug. 7, has said he prefers an
alternative to eradication. He is seeking international funding for
programs to encourage poor coca and opium farmers to switch to legal, but
less lucrative crops.

President Clinton said in a letter to Pastrana last week that he would
support those efforts. But American officials insist eradication remains
the central element of U.S. anti-narcotics policy in Colombia --the
producer of 80 percent of the cocaine sold in the United States and a
growing share of the heroin.

Copyright 1998 The Associated Press 
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Checked-by: Richard Lake