Colombian Judge Allows Drug Spraying To Resume

AP 6aug01

BOGOTA --  A Bogota judge ruled Monday that the U.S.-backed fumigation of drug crops could resume in Indian lands of the Colombian Amazon, 11 days after he ordered it suspended.

Judge Gilberto Reyes had ordered a temporary suspension of the aerial fumigations July 27 after the Organization of Indian Peoples of the Colombian Amazon alleged the herbicide glyphosate was causing health problems and environmental damage.

Reyes said he ordered the temporary suspension to give the Indian group time to back up their claims with evidence. When they were unable to provide the evidence, Reyes revoked the suspension order, said the judge's assistant, Jaime Ardile.

Jorge Rojas, of Paz Colombia, a group of Colombian non-governmental organizations, said Reyes' decision would be appealed.

The aerial fumigation is a key component of President Andres Pastrana's Plan Colombia, which Washington is supporting with $1.3 million in aid. The effort is aimed at reducing coca and poppy crops, which produce cocaine and heroin respectively, and deny income to leftist rebels and right-wing paramilitaries who earn a fortune by "taxing" the drug crops.

Gen. Gustavo Socha, chief of the Colombian anti-narcotic police, said Monday's ruling reaffirmed what the government has been saying all along about the flights by the U.S. crop dusters.

"They don't cause any harm to the health of people or the environment," Socha said. U.S. officials say the herbicide, manufactured by the U.S. company Monsanto (MON) and sold as common weedkiller under the name "Roundup," is safe.

Opponents say it causes skin, respiratory and intestinal illnesses and harms Colombia's diverse ecosystems.

Since the U.S.-funded fumigation began under Plan Colombia in December, 50,000 hectares of coca have been sprayed. The goal for 2002 is 80,000 hectares.

Underscoring U.S. concern about efforts to stop fumigation, Ambassador Anne Patterson warned that a permanent halt could jeopardize support for further aid in Washington.

"I am very scared that if the fumigation in Colombia doesn't continue, we won't give the level of assistance that Colombia needs," she told journalists on Monday.

Patterson didn't elaborate on what assistance would be cut. Washington's $1.3 billion contribution to President Andres Pastrana's anti-drug offensive, dubbed Plan Colombia, is already in the pipeline.

It is paying for dozens of Blackhawk and "Super Huey" helicopters to ferry troops to drug-producing regions controlled by Colombia's illegal armed groups. The rival groups, along with the government, are embroiled in a 37-year civil war fueled by the drug trade.

The U.S. funds are also bankrolling social programs in Colombia.

For some, the debate recalls Washington's "big stick" approach to Latin America of times past.

In the respected Bogota newsmagazine Cambio, columnist Roberto Pombo alleged the sprayings were destroying the environment and impoverishing the country's peasant farmers, who have few or no viable alternatives to making a living other than growing drug crops.

Pombo called the fumigations a "failed campaign against drug traffickers, all by imperial order from the United States."

However, Pastrana had sought the assistance, and a groundswell of public opinion against the fumigation offensive, slated to continue over at least the next three years, hasn't materialized.

U.K. company Imperial Chemical Industries PLC (ICI) confirmed Friday it has stopped supplying an additive used with the glyphosate, saying that use of the two agents together hadn't been tested.

The crop dusters, many provided by the State Department and flown by U.S. contractors, have blanketed 123,500 acres of cocaine-producing crops since the campaign was launched last December in southern Putumayo province, Colombia's cocaine heartland.

Recent U.S. estimates showed 336,400 acres of coca, the main ingredient in cocaine, were being cultivated in Colombia. Colombian police say 15,300 acres were being used to grow poppy, from which heroin is made.