Pubdate: Thu, 05 Sep 2002 Source: Philippine Daily Inquirer (Philippines) Copyright: 2002 Philippine Daily Inquirer Contact: http://www.inquirer.net/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1073 Author: Agence France-Presse WITH US HELP, COLOMBIA CRACKS DOWN HARD ON COCA BOGOTA - On US advisers' cues, Colombia has carried out a month-long crackdown on coca and opium-poppy growing, fumigating crops in a strife-torn region along the borders with Ecuador and Peru but local farmers say the spraying is harming health and legal crops. "We have stepped up spraying in the Putumayo (department) towns of San Miguel and Valle del Guamuez," a government official who works on fighting drug trafficking told AFP privately. Anti-narcotics police said the heavier fumigation has been under way for four weeks -- since President Alvaro Uribe took office -- and that US agents are advising Colombian forces handling the spraying. Putumayo Governor Ivan Guerrero slammed the government's crackdown Wednesday as heavy-handed and unhealthy, arguing it could make farmers sick and undercuts manual crop eradication program they do as part of a drugs crop-substitution program. "This is not about fumigating with small planes; it's about taking human beings into account," Guerrero said ahead of a governors' meeting with Uribe. Uribe, who took office August 7, announced August 23 that the drug crops fumigation would be intensified, adding that he was seeking international aid to fund a crop substitution program for the estimated 50,000 families who live off the crops. "We are going to spray wherever we have to spray, wherever there is a coca bush or poppy" Uribe said at the time, referring to the raw materials from which cocaine and heroin are made. "There is no room for negotiation on that." "If Colombia does not defeat drugs, they will destroy our the rule of law and our environment," Uribe said. Rural leaders from Putumayo told AFP by phone the spraying was hurting their health and legal crops. "They are spraying us like cockroaches. Our children are suffering from respiratory and skin ailments, and our corn and yucca crops and water springs are being harmed, but the 'gringos' could care less," one farmers' union leader said on condition of anonymity. He said the spraying, for all its volume, often ends up completely missing its mark. - --- MAP posted-by: Beth