Pubdate: Sat, 03 Mar 2001 Source: Philadelphia Daily News (PA) Copyright: 2001 Philadelphia Newspapers Inc. Contact: PO Box 7788, Philadelphia, PA 19101 Website: http://www.phillynews.com/ Forum: http://interactive.phillynews.com/talk-show/ Author: Anthony Boadle, Reuters COCAINE CULTIVATION INCREASING IN COLOMBIA WASHINGTON - Despite U.S. money and military aid, cocaine production in Colombia has increased, fueled by strong demand from American and, increasingly, European drug users, a U.S. government report said yesterday. While coca leaf crops in Peru and Bolivia, original sources of the drug, were reduced to new lows last year, cultivation of the Andean shrub continues to expand in Colombia, protected by Marxist guerrillas, the annual State Department report said. Colombian coca plantations grew by 11 percent to 336,000 acres of high-yielding leaf - enough to produce 580 tons of cocaine, double Colombia's potential just five years ago, it said. The 2000 report on drug-producing nations backed up the Bush administration's decision to approve the anti-drug efforts of Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, as well as of transit countries Brazil, Ecuador, Panama, Paraguay, Venezuela and Mexico. Poverty-stricken Haiti, powerless to stop smuggling, received a waiver. The Communist government of Cuba, located in the direct path of cocaine flowing to the United States, won praise for sharing information on drug trafficking with U.S. agencies. The report did not take into account the 61,800 acres destroyed by herbicide since the beginning of the year in a U.S.-backed military-police drive into rebel-controlled southern Colombia. The United States last year committed $1.3 billion to fight cocaine and heroin in Colombia, mainly by bolstering the army to break the "narco-guerrilla" alliance. The U.S. report said coca crops in a rebel-run area, where the Colombian government withdrew troops as part of peace talks, increased by 33 percent to 19,500 acres last year. Crop dusters protected by U.S. helicopters have so far sprayed coca crops in Putumayo province, a bastion of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the country's largest leftist insurgency that took up arms 37 years ago. But the State Department said it detected new coca crops in the northern provinces of Bolivar and Norte de Santander, where guerrillas of the smaller National Liberation Army (ELN) hold sway. This points to a "balloon effect" of the U.S.-backed anti-drug offensive, driving narcotics output to other parts of Colombia, the world's largest producer of cocaine, and spilling over into neighboring countries. To counter the "balloon effect," the Bush administration will widen Plan Colombia to provide more anti-drug funds to neighboring countries when it announces detailed budget figures in April, an official said. Despite political upheaval caused by the downfall of former president Alberto Fujimori last year, Peru continued to reduce its coca crops, the report said. But the price of the leaf remains high and some abandoned plantations were revived by peasants, while Peru's increased opium poppy fields has U.S. authorities worried. The United States remains the world's largest single market for cocaine, with an average 300 tons of the white powder entering the country every year. But the U.S. report said cocaine use has fallen sharply among Americans in the last decade and half, and drug barons are increasingly looking elsewhere for new customers, mainly in Europe. Easy transport and communications and the abolition of national border controls has turned the European Union into "the best prospect for increasing cocaine consumption," the State Department report said. "Throughout Europe, cocaine seems to have the prestige and allure of danger, thrills and enhanced endurance that attracted American athletes, media stars and Wall Street traders to the drug in the 1980s," it said. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake