Pubdate: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 Source: Reuters Copyright: 2001 Reuters Limited Author: Anthony Boadle COLOMBIAN GOVERNORS SLAM U.S.-BACKED COCA SPRAYING WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Four Colombian governors pressed the United States on Tuesday to stop use of a herbicide on drug plantations in their country, charging the U.S.-funded Plan Colombia had destroyed food crops and hurt the health of peasants. The governors of the four most affected provinces Putumayo, Narino, Cauca and Tolima, called for an end to the aerial spraying and more funding for social programs to encourage farmers to turn to legal crops. Complaints of stomach upsets and skin rashes have increased 60 percent in Putumayo since spraying of plantations with the herbicide glyphosate began on Dec. 22, said Gov. Ivan Gerardo Guerrero, whose province grows 60 percent of Colombia's coca. ``Even though they tell us we can bathe in glyphosate, and that an American drank a whole glass of it and nothing happened to him, we do not believe that glyphosate is harmless to human beings'', he told a news conference. Deformed babies have been born in the rural municipality of Puerto Guzman, where spraying with the defoliant took place in 1999 and no other chemicals are used in farming, he said. The governors said they had no scientific proof of the health hazards and it was hard to gather data from families who had to walk up to 12 hours to the nearest medical center. But they said there was evidence of glyphosate being blown into the water used by fish farms and charged that spraying by crop duster had been based solely on satellite photographs without taking into account the local population. U.S. officials said glyphosate was the most widely used herbicide in the world, commonly sprayed in gardens in the United States to kill weeds. They said there was no serious evidence of any impact on human health. The State Department said, however, that it has agreed with the U.S. Congress to study whether the recent spraying in southern Colombia has had a health impact. U.S. Defends Herbicide The U.S. government acknowledged that farm crops may have been damaged by the aerial spraying of 62,000 acres (25,000 hectares) with glyphosate through Feb 5, mainly in Putumayo. William Brownfield, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, told journalists on Monday that drug crops were often camouflaged among legal crops. ``In those situations, there is little remedy for the affected grower, because the presumption is that he or she did it intentionally for the purpose of protecting the illegal crop,'' Brownfield said. The United States last year committed $1 billion to funding a military and police offensive to stamp out cocaine output in southern Colombia, the world's largest producer of the drug. The U.S. aid is mostly military training and helicopters to deploy army battalions to guard police on anti-drug mission in areas run by entrenched Marxist guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries. The governors said the large military component of Plan Colombia was only serving to deepen the spiral of violence that was destroyed their societies. ``We are looking for an alternative strategy, one based on real social justice that does not label us as delinquents,'' Guerrero said, speaking in name of small farmers who have turned to drug crops for a livelihood. The governors said they were all for the eradication of industrial plantations, but insisted on the mechanical rather than chemical destruction of the coca shrubs, followed by the handing of land to peasants for legal farming. ``The fumigation arrived in 30 days in enormous quantities, but the social aid has only begun to arrive drop by drop'', said Guerrero, who is proposing drawing 27,000 peasant families into alternative crop programs funded by Plan Colombia. Senators Help Andean Trade The governors met with U.S. legislators in their bid to lobby against the herbicide spraying and for $600 million in U.S. aid next year to fund social programs in six provinces where drugs are grown. In a bid to help Colombia's economy, U.S. senators introduced legislation on Tuesday to renew and expand U.S. trade benefits for four nations of the Andean region. The bill would extend the Andean Trade Preferences Act (ATPA), which expires on Dec. 4, to September 2005 and provide the same duty-free access for certain apparel products that Caribbean Basin countries already enjoy. - --- MAP posted-by: Jo-D