Pubdate: Mon, 27 Aug 2001
Source: Log Cabin Democrat (AR)
Copyright: The Log Cabin Democrat
Contact:  http://thecabin.net/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/548

COLOMBIAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE QUESTIONS US DRUG POLICY

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- A U.S.-backed program for aerially eradicating 
drug crops here has failed, a front-running Colombian presidential 
candidate said Sunday, just days before the Bush administration's first 
high-level visit. "Today there is more cocaine being produced, more 
trafficking, more traffickers and larger areas under cultivation," Horacio 
Serpa, a former interior minister who is leading polls ahead of May's 
elections, wrote in an editorial in Bogota's Cambio news magazine.

"New and alternative formulas are needed along with a recognition that the 
(counter-drug) policies applied to date have been a failure," wrote Serpa, 
a member of the opposition Liberal Party.

Elsewhere Sunday, the army announced that U.S.-trained counterdrug troops 
seized a jungle refinery where leftist guerrillas were allegedly making 
gasoline used to process cocaine.

The spraying of cocaine and heroin-producing crops and U.S. troop training 
are part of a $1.3 billion drug-fighting program approved under the Clinton 
administration.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom