[A-List] Colombia: the war on drugs

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Colombia plans to eradicate drugs crop by 2006
By Guy Dinmore in Washington
Financial Times: June 4 2003

Colombia on Tuesday claimed its huge illegal drug crop would be eradicated
by 2006 with the help of the US.

In remarks before a US Senate caucus on international narcotics control,
Francisco Santos Calderón, Colombia's vice-president, also warned leftwing
guerrillas involved in drug trafficking were on an "international shopping
spree" for more sophisticated weaponry.

Mr Santos Calderón urged the US to maintain its financial and military
assistance to Colombia - the biggest source of cocaine and heroin in the
US - in combating drug traffickers and associated rebel groups.

He said rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) who
are involved in the drugs trade were taking their war to the cities, citing
a car-bomb attack on a Bogotá nightclub in February that killed 32 people.

Aerial spraying of coca plants would eradicate 50 per cent of illicit
production for the source of cocaine by the end of this year, Mr Santos
Calderón said.

"Plan Colombia is working," he said, assuring the US that the $1.7bn in
economic and military aid supplied since 2000 had been well spent.

Coca cultivation fell by 15 per cent last year, while poppy cultivation
decreased 25 per cent, he said.

Colombia is the source of some 70 per cent of cocaine used in the US and a
significant source of heroin, which is processed from opium poppies.

The US has reduced cocaine consumption by two-thirds since the late 1980s,
according to testimony by Phillip McLean of the Center for Strategic and
International Studies.

US officials echoed Mr Santos Calderón's sentiments. "The money we invested
is starting to pay off," said Curt Struble, acting assistant secretary of
state for western hemisphere affairs. "We are turning the corner in coca
production."

General James Hill, head of US Southern Command, said it would be "a
terrible mistake" if Congress were to take away the "expanded authority" it
gave the US military last year, which allows it to provide intelligence and
equipment for combating groups such as Farc and drug gangs.

US forces also train the Colombian military but are not authorised to engage
in combat.

Jess Ford, a congressional investigator in the US General Accounting Office,
criticised Colombia's reliance on private military contractors from the US.

He also rebuked the US State and Defence departments for not developing
estimates of future programme costs and not defining their future roles in
Colombia.

Current counter-narcotics programmes would require as much as $230m a year,
he said, quoting US embassy officials in Bogotá.