Pubdate: Wed, 04 Sep 2002 Source: Arizona Republic (AZ) Copyright: 2002 The Arizona Republic Contact: http://www.arizonarepublic.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/24 Author: Juan Forero, New York Times U.S. BEGINS NEW EFFORT TO KILL COLOMBIAN COCA GROWTH ROSAL, Colombia - With the full support of the Colombian president, the United States has begun what American officials say will be the biggest and most aggressive effort yet to wipe out coca growing. A round of aerial spraying to kill Colombia's mammoth drug crops, which resumed here a month ago, is part of a new phase in the war on drugs. American officials said that it was bigger and more aggressive than before and that if sustained, it could at last make substantial inroads against Colombia's coca growing. With the approval of Colombia's new president, Alvaro Uribe, the American plan calls for more crop dusters operating more hours and with none of the restrictions that officials say hampered spraying programs in the past. In the Guamuez Valley, the world's richest coca-producing region, the effects are clear. The crop dusters have returned, flying low and leaving a fine mist of gray spray in Colombia's coca-growing heartland. Fields of brown, withering coca bushes, whose leaves are used to make cocaine, remain in their wake. "Look at all this - it was all fumigated," groused one farmer, Diomar Montenegro, 49, as he stood in a field of wilting coca bushes in this hamlet in southern Colombia. "I cannot do this anymore. They have put me out in the street." It is a refrain American officials are happy to hear. In the last large-scale spraying of this region, a two-month onslaught that ended in February of last year, the United States said it would concentrate on "industrial size" plots. American and Colombian officials pledged that small farmers would be spared as long as they had agreed to stop growing coca voluntarily in exchange for modest government benefits. In reality, many small farms were sprayed. But the spraying ended earlier than American officials had hoped, because Andres Pastrana, then the president, forbade some missions for fear of further alienating peasants in the midst of delicate peace negotiations with leftist rebels. The result was that 80 percent of the crops sprayed in this province, Putumayo, were replanted, and cocaine trafficking to the United States continued unabated. Now, Uribe is allowing U.S. officials to plan missions wherever and whenever they see fit, and there is no pretext that small farmers will not be hit. American planners say they intend to cover as much acreage with defoliant as possible to stop the replanting of coca. - --- MAP posted-by: Josh