Donald Rumsfeld And Regional Leaders Agreed On Cooperation, But Differed On The Role Of A Proposed Multinational Battalion Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on Thursday said he and his Central American counterparts had "useful" talks on security cooperation at a Key Biscayne gathering, but his guests questioned a proposal for a multinational battalion. Honduras has strongly pushed the battalion idea, arguing that it's needed to tackle regional issues from major natural disasters and peacekeeping duties to violent street gangs and smuggling of drugs, migrants and weapons. [continues 393 words]
Among U.S. Officials, Disagreement Has Sharpened Over The Credibility Of Reports That Venezuela's Hugo Chavez Aided Colombian Rebels. VENEZUELA - The Bush administration is growing increasingly divided over the credibility of intelligence reports on Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's links to Colombian guerrillas, officials say. "It's getting very testy, because the believers and skeptics want to quote only from the reports that agree with their own views," said a top U.S. government official involved in the dispute. The debate has remained largely out of the public eye because skeptics and believers agree that making the allegations against Chavez public would only push him further into the anti-American left and divert attention from a drive by his domestic opponents for a recall referendum. [continues 796 words]
Opium, Heroin Addicts Have Easy Access As Ban Lifted In Afghanistan PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- These are easier times for Pakistan's estimated 300,000 heroin users, with prices tumbling from $1.20 to 30 cents a gram after the Taliban government in Afghanistan, the world's largest grower of opium poppies, lifted all restrictions on the industry in the face of U.S. attacks. U.S. and U.N. narcotics officials say the Taliban has ended its year- old ban against the cultivation of opium poppies, the starting point for heroin, so that it could tax the industry and replenish its war coffers. [continues 895 words]
Pakistan Addicts Don't Bother Hiding, Live By Begging For Support PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- These are easier times for Pakistan's estimated 300,000 heroin users, with prices tumbling from $1.20 a gram to 30 U.S. cents after the Taliban government in Afghanistan, the world's largest grower of opium poppies, lifted all restrictions on the industry in the face of U.S. attacks. U.S. and U.N. narcotics officials believe the Taliban lifted their year-old ban against growing opium poppies, the starting point for heroin, so they could tax the industry and replenish their war coffers. The ban had been declared on religious grounds. [continues 591 words]
KHYBER AGENCY, Pakistan -- Khyber policeman Sheerdill says it's not true that fears of a U.S. attack on Afghanistan have caused heroin and opium prices to plunge along this wild corner of the Pakistani-Afghan border. At least not for the drugs he sells. ``Just rumors,'' a smiling Sheerdill said over the weekend as he sold a four-square-inch sheet of opium and a lollipop-sized dab of hashish to a visitor for 600 rupees, or $10. Sheerdill, who like many people here uses only one name, is a good businessman, trying to get the highest possible prices for his goods. [continues 1111 words]
U.S., Colombia Sound Alarm Over Increase LA CAMPANA, Colombia -- Clinging to a steep hillside 9,000 feet high in the Andes, Mariana Almendro's tiny garden is a gorgeous blanket of red, violet and pink opium poppies. Profitable, too, producing a milky gum that brings about $115 a pound from buyers who turn it into heroin. A Guambiano Indian living on a reservation a half-hour drive from the nearest paved road, Almendro, 48, said she sees nothing wrong with her illegal crop. [continues 1127 words]
Army Offensive Seeks To Destroy FARC Column RINCON DEL INDIO, Colombia -- The FARC guerrillas had fled their jungle camp in a hurry when the Kfir jets bombed it, judging from the bowl of lentil soup still on a table and the other gear they abandoned. The Colombian army soldiers hot on their trail found a clinic with a surgical table and three portable dentist's chairs; four computers; a foot-high stack of communications code books; an open-air classroom with seating for 100; a TV satellite dish; and tons of food. [continues 897 words]
Seized Shipments Alarm U.S. Agents LA CAMPANA, Colombia - Clinging to a steep hillside 9,000 feet high in the Andes, Mariana Almendro's tiny garden is a gorgeous blanket of red, violet and pink opium poppies. Profitable, too, producing a milky gum that brings about $115 a pound from buyers who turn it into heroin. A Guambiano Indian living on a reservation a half-hour drive from the nearest paved road, Almendro, 48, sees nothing wrong with her illegal crop. "It just brings in a little money for food," she said. [continues 931 words]
LA CAMPANA, Colombia -- Clinging to a steep hillside 9,000 feet high in the Andes, Mariana Almendro's tiny garden is a gorgeous blanket of red, violet and pink opium poppies. Profitable, too, producing a milky gum that brings about $115 a pound from buyers who turn it into heroin. A Guambiano Indian living on a reservation a half-hour drive from the nearest paved road, Almendro, 48, sees nothing wrong with her illegal crop. ``It just brings in a little money for food,'' she said. [continues 1274 words]
We're Not Rambos, Aerial Sprayers Say BOGOTA, Colombia -- Bob and Mark want everyone to know they're not the "Godless and Lawless Rambos" portrayed by the local press. They are simply American pilots who spray herbicides on Colombia's coca and opium poppy fields. They call themselves "aerial applicators," a term that may be technically correct but hardly suggests the occasional moments of sheer terror faced by pilots who glide 200 miles per hour at tree-top level while gunmen protecting illegal crops fire at them from below. [continues 858 words]
LA HORMIGA, Colombia -- It is harvest time in the mint-green hills of southern Putumayo state, the epicenter of Colombia's coca cultivation. But coca farmers such as Gabriel Nieto are in no mood to celebrate. The price of what everyone here calls simply "the merchandise" has plunged following a U.S.-backed aerial defoliation campaign in December and January that turned huge expanses of coca bushes into dead brown stalks. Stepped-up army patrols have limited supply and driven up the cost of chemicals needed to make cocaine, and thousands of farmers and itinerant leaf pickers have moved out, leaving behind half-filled brothels and churches. [continues 1420 words]
Oil: Guerrillas are bombing a pipeline responsible for most of a poor area's income, hobbling its economy and leading to reduced health services. ARAUCA, Colombia - In a region so rich in oil that it's been called "Saudi Arauca," 70-year-old Transito Pelayo may die because a public hospital lacks $10 for blood tests needed to monitor her failing heart. And that, in one of the ugliest pages of Colombia's bloody war, is because leftist FARC guerrillas are trying to blackmail two U.S. and Colombian oil companies by mercilessly bombing an oil pipeline whose royalties cover 92 percent of all the region's government budgets. [continues 1088 words]
BOGOTA, Colombia -- Some 3,000 coca workers who rioted in the town of Tibu to protest the U.S.-backed spraying of their fields with herbicides have returned home but will meet with government envoys to negotiate a voluntary eradication pact, officials said Friday. The disturbances were the first outbreak of public violence against stepped-up Colombian government efforts -- financed and operated by the U.S. State Department -- to eradicate coca fields with aerial spraying of a herbicide. The 3,000 farmhands began leaving Thursday, after residents angered by the rioting forced their way into the stadium where they were staying and took away their food stocks, acting Tibu Mayor Gonzalo Cardenas said. [continues 265 words]
Three days of rioting incited by coca farmers angry over the aerial spraying of their fields with herbicides are casting fresh attention on a dispute between Colombia and Washington over a key part of the U.S. counter-narcotics strategy in Colombia. The rioters want to suspend a 3-week-old spraying campaign in this part of northeastern Colombia, a move that U.S. officials would consider a setback in the nationwide campaign to eradicate the coca plants. President Andres Pastrana has yet to respond to the protests, but any deal to curtail the spraying here could sharpen U.S. frustrations over his decision earlier this spring to cancel a much larger sprraying offensive in the southern state of Putumayo. [continues 778 words]
TIBU, Colombia -- Riot police battled about 3,000 demonstrators in this farming community Tuesday as angry coca leaf pickers who burned down a refueling base for U.S. spray aircraft continued to protest the eradication of their fields with herbicides. The rioting, which began during the weekend, represents the most open and violent display of opposition by coca farmers and field hands to fumigation efforts under the U.S.-supported Plan Colombia, a $1.3 billion program designed to reduce the cultivation of the plant used to produce cocaine. [continues 777 words]
BOGOTA, Colombia -- A survey of Colombia's coca fields sponsored by a U.N. agency suggests they are far larger than previously believed -- one-third the size of Miami-Dade County. But U.S. officials say they doubt the estimate because of the methods used. The survey by the U.N. Drug Control Program, or UNDCP, estimated Colombia's coca fields at 402,610 acres, compared to Miami-Dade's 1.3 million acres, based on images taken Aug. 31 from one U.S. and two French commercial satellites. The results were made public in mid-May, provoking a debate over the efficacy of U.S. counter-narcotics policies. [continues 832 words]
Suspension Of U.S. Radar Opens Skies To Traffickers BOGOTA, Colombia -- Drug smuggling airplanes have been swarming into Colombia since U.S. radar planes stopped assisting with air interdictions after the mistaken downing of an American missionary's plane in Peru, according to the commander of the Colombian air force. Ten to 12 flights a week are dashing in from Brazil and Venezuela, "significantly higher" than before U.S. radar assistance was halted April 20, said Gen. Hector Fabio Velasco. On May 1-3 alone, 13 flights were spotted, he added. [continues 833 words]
BOGOTA, Colombia -- As U.S. efforts to reduce drug trafficking out of the Andes escalate, more U.S.-supplied equipment is flowing into the region and more Americans are becoming involved -- and occasionally coming under fire. But because of the growing privatization of U.S. military efforts abroad, their presence is often unseen. Increasingly, the U.S. government is contracting or licensing private American firms to carry out quasi-military functions in a practice known as ``outsourcing,'' a practice that critics brand as the hiring of mercenaries. It is largely the result of the shrinking size of the U.S. Army and a reluctance to risk the lives of U.S. servicemen in foreign conflicts. [continues 1510 words]
Officials Deny Farmers' Assertion That Drive Does Harm Far Afield LARANDIA, Colombia -- A visit to the area of Colombia where spraying is taking place against coca cultivations can prompt exaggerated tales about the effect of the operations. Coca farmers pointed at every dead bush and tree as a victim of glyphosate, including one tree obviously dead for years and a 200-foot ceiba tree. "Impossible. The small amount of glyphosate we use cannot kill even medium-sized trees," said Luis Parra, a Colombian forestry engineer who first proved in 1992 that the herbicide was effective in eradicating coca bushes. [continues 310 words]
