Pubdate: Fri, 01 Mar 2002
Source: Reuters (Wire)
Copyright: 2002 Reuters Limited
Author: Jonathan Wright
US TO OMIT COLOMBIAN COCA FIGURE FROM DRUG REPORT
WASHINGTON - The United States will omit a Colombian coca production figure
- -- the most important single statistic -- from this year's drug trade
report because the CIA has not provided one, U.S. officials said on Friday.
The CIA figure is expected to be much higher than that of the Colombian
government, which this week reported a decline of more than 11 percent in
the 14 months up to Nov. 1, 2000. The United Nations endorses the Colombian
figure.
The production figure is crucial because it gives some indication of the
success of President Andres Pastrana's Plan Colombia, in which the United
States has invested more than $1 billion over the past two years.
A State Department official said the report, which had to be ready in
mid-February, would not include the CIA's Colombian coca figure because it
was not available.
"We still don't have the numbers. It will have TBD ('to be determined') in
certain sections," she said.
She said that a last-minute delay in releasing the report on Friday was not
due to the Colombian statistics but merely because members of Congress must
receive it before the public.
The Colombian government said on Wednesday that the cultivation of coca,
used for making cocaine, had dropped for the first time in Colombia since
the start of Plan Colombia.
A report based on satellite imaging showed coca acreage in Colombia -- by
far the world's largest cocaine producer -- had fallen more than 11 percent
in the 14-month period.
It pegged total coca cultivation at 357,818 acres (144,807 hectares) on
Nov. 1, 2001, compared with 403,487 acres (163,289 hectares) on Aug. 31, 2000.
Colombia's anti-narcotics police chief, Gen. Gustavo Socha, attributed the
decline to U.S.-sponsored aerial eradication efforts under Plan Colombia,
which began in 2001.
Klaus Nyholm, the director of the U.N. Drug Control Program in Colombia,
Venezuela and Ecuador, endorsed the Colombia figure and said he thought the
CIA's number could be significantly higher.
Sample Survey
The New York Times said the CIA figure would show production to have
stabilized or even increased during 2001.
But the differences may arise from the different methods used. The CIA did
a sample survey of key areas and then made an extrapolation for the whole
country.
Rand Beers, the State Department official in charge of international
narcotics affairs, said on Monday that U.S. production figures for Colombia
were a year old.
But he said that the anti-drug campaign in Colombia had yet to bear fruit
in the form of cocaine shortages and higher prices on the streets of
American cities.
Colombia is by far the largest producer of cocaine in the world, and
supplies more than 80 percent of the drug sold in the United States, the
largest market for cocaine.
Beers said that last year spray planes, many of them financed with U.S.
aid, sprayed 212,000 of about 340,000 acres (85,000 of about 135,000
hectares) planted with coca.
But the farmers often replant their fields with coca and the United States
has no idea how much cocaine is stockpiled in Colombia or along the chain
of supply to the United States, he added.
"I am not in a position to indicate that there has been at this point in
time an effect on price and availability in the United States. ... I cannot
tell you based on available information that the amount of cocaine that
comes into the United States is less," he added.
Some media reports have said that the flow of drugs into the United States
may have even increased in the months since the Sept. 11 attacks because
the U.S. Coast Guard and Air Force have devoted their resources to homeland
protection.
Robert Brown, a senior official in the White House's anti-drugs operation,
said the U.S. government did not know how the redeployments had affected
drug smugglers.
The CIA will release its Colombian figures to other U.S. government
agencies within a few days, officials said.
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