-Caveat Lector-
www.lawg.org/colombia.htm
"The groundswell against Plan Colombia comes as the U.S. Congress debates
new aid for Colombia and Washington prepares to deliver sophisticated
helicopters as part of a $1.3 billion aid package approved last year in
support of the program."
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Friday, 20 July 2001
Colombia Drug Policy Questioned
By Jared Kotler
BOGOTA -- President Andres Pastrana's U.S.-backed offensive against drug
crops has hit a flurry of domestic opposition from critics who say aerial
spraying harms people and the environment, punishes poor farmers and has
failed to stem drug trafficking.
The groundswell against Plan Colombia comes as the U.S. Congress debates
new aid for Colombia and Washington prepares to deliver sophisticated
helicopters as part of a $1.3 billion aid package approved last year in
support of the program.
The first three of 16 Blackhawk helicopters are expected to arrive by the
end of July and the remainder by December. The helicopters will give
greater mobility to U.S.-trained army battalions assigned to destroy jungle
drug laboratories and provide security against rebel fire for aerial
spraying missions using crop-killing herbicides.
The State Department also expects to deliver four additional crop-dusting
planes next month and eight more by February.
Colombian and U.S. officials have given repeated assurances that the
eradication push only targets large-scale coca and opium plantations
operated by drug traffickers. They say the chemical used, a variant of the
popular backyard fertilizer Roundup, is ecologically harmless and safe for
humans.
But environmentalists, human rights activists and small farmers who say
their crops are also being hit remain staunchly opposed.
Their arguments are now echoing on the political level, where governors
from the main drug-producing states, Colombia's top human rights official,
the nation's comptroller general and a leading lawmaker from Pastrana's own
party came out this week against the policy.
Conservative Party Sen. Juan Manuel Ospina said Thursday he plans to
introduce legislation sharply scaling back forced aerial fumigation,
requiring more emphasis on aid to help farmers switch to legal crops, and
decriminalizing small drug plots. Fumigation ''has been absolutely
ineffective in reducing or eliminating the areas under cultivation,''
Ospina said in an interview.
At a congressional hearing Wednesday, Comptroller Carlos Ossa called for
fumigation to be suspended altogether, saying it is proceeding without an
approved environmental protection plan. Federal human rights ombudsman
Eduardo Cifuentes also demanded a stop, adding that government offers of
compensation for poor farmers are lagging far behind the spraying.
Earlier in the week, six governors from some of the country's main drug
producing states forced a meeting with top officials in Bogota in which
they warned current policies could provoke mass protests in their regions.
So far, Pastrana shows no signs of bending.
Spraying of heroin plantations continued this week in Cauca and Narino,
even as those states' governors were in Bogota registering their protests.
Anti-narcotics police chief Gen. Gustavo Socha blamed the criticism on
''drug traffickers'' spreading disinformation.
Any scaleback in forced eradication would likely put the government at odds
with Washington, whose number one priority in Colombia is the drug war.
Colombia is the world's leading cocaine exporting nation and a major
supplier of heroin to the United States.
U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson on Wednesday reaffirmed aerial eradication
as a ''key'' to its aid program. The embassy has commissioned a study it
believes will refute claims that the spraying is causing respiratory and
skin ailments among farmers and their families.
The U.S. Congress last week began consideration of an $882 million
follow-up aid package floated by the Bush administration for Colombia and
its Andean neighbors. Concerns about fumigation _ and the military's human
rights record are expected to arise.
A leading conservation group, World Wildlife Fund, sent a letter to members
of Congress last week warning that fumigation threatens Colombia's
biodiversity and urging a moratorium ''at least until an adequate
environmental impact study has been conducted.''
The latest controversy follows what U.S. officials are calling a successful
start to the eradication push, which began late last year in Putumayo, the
largest coca-growing province.
Since January, according to official figures released here this week,
spraying has done away with 128,000 acres of coca more than one-third of
the amount U.S. officials estimated was growing in Colombia at the end of
last year. Gonzalo de Francisco, the government's point man for Putumayo,
said he has also signed up more than 40,000 peasant families in agreements
to manually eradicate their coca in return for aid to grow legal crops.
Copyright 2001 Associated Press
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Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF:
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The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
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