Pubdate: Thu, 28 Dec 2000 Source: New York Times (NY) Copyright: 2000 The New York Times Company Contact: 229 West 43rd Street, New York, NY 10036 Fax: (212) 556-3622 Website: http://www.nytimes.com/ Forum: http://forums.nytimes.com/comment/ Author: Reuters WAR AND DRUG TRADE CAUSE COLOMBIA ECOLOGICAL DISASTER By REUTERS BOGOTA - Warring leftist guerrillas and far-right paramilitaries, and the illegal drug trade in the world's top cocaine producer are causing an ecological disaster of "unsuspected proportions" in Colombia, according to an army report published on Wednesday. The report, titled 'The scars on Mother Earth,' said the rebel groups' tactic of blowing up oil pipelines had polluted the Andean nation's ecosystem with more than 2 million tons of crude oil in the last decade. The drug trade, it said, contaminated the soil with 200,000 tons of chemicals a year and causing deforestation at a pace that was rapidly destroying the country's jungles. "Guerrillas and paramilitaries have caused this ecological catastrophe which, ... if the current rate of deforestation continues, will turn half the country's jungles into pasture in 17 years," the report said, quoting Environment Ministry experts. It said the heavily wooded regions of Amazonas, bordering Peru in the south, and Orinoquia, which borders Venezuela and Brazil in the east, were in were in "imminent danger." Colombia is one of the world's five top countries in terms of water resources and biodiversity, the Environment Ministry says. No one there was available for comment on the report. The army calculated that about 3,600 square miles of jungle and agricultural land had been lost in the past decade. Although a tiny proportion of Colombia's total area of about 441,000 square miles, the destruction still represents "ecological damage ... of unsuspected proportions," it said. Colombia has been riven by four decades of strife -- the longest conflict in Latin America -- involving the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN), far-right paramilitary death squads and the army, which critics accuse of being linked to paramilitaries or turning a blind eye to their activities. The war has claimed 35,000 lives in the past decade alone. Crude And Coke The United States believes the 17,000-strong FARC, Latin America's biggest rebel army, plays a dominant role in drug production. Colombia is the source of 90 percent of the world's cocaine, with annual output of 520 tons, and it also produces 6 tons of heroin annually, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. Guerrillas have targeted oil, Colombia's main export, as a tactic in their war against the state, staging some 1,000 assaults on oil pipelines since 1986. The 5,000-strong ELN has been responsible for 80 percent of the assaults. The army report, citing Environment Ministry figures, said crude oil had contaminated 1,625 miles of river, equivalent to the total length of Colombia's two biggest rivers, the Cauca and the Magdalena, with slicks of up to 112 miles in length. The report called the drug trade "one of the direct causes of the destruction of biodiversity," saying coca leaf, poppies and marijuana cultivation had caused serious deforestation. It cited Colombia's human rights monitor's office as saying 3,300 square miles of jungle had been lost in the last 30 years. Furthermore, it said some 200,000 tons a year of 28 types of chemicals used in the processing of coca leaf and poppies for cocaine and heroin were leaching into the water and soil. - --- MAP posted-by: GD