The groundswell against Plan Colombia comes as the U.S. Congress debates new aid for Colombia and Washington prepares to deliver sophisticated helicopters as part of a $1.3 billion aid package approved last year in support of the program.

Colombian anti-narcotics police officers keep guard as planes fumigate coca crops in the department of Narino, in southwestern Colombia. President Andres Pastrana's U.S.-backed push to eradicate drug crops has run into a flurry of domestic opposition from critics who say the aerial spraying is harming human health and the environment, punishing poor farmers and failing to stem drug trafficking. (AP Photo/Scott Dalton,)

The first three of 16 Blackhawk helicopters are expected to arrive by the end of July and the remainder by December. The helicopters will give greater mobility to U.S.-trained army battalions assigned to destroy jungle drug laboratories and provide security against rebel fire for aerial spraying missions using crop-killing herbicides.

The State Department also expects to deliver four additional crop-dusting planes next month and eight more by February.

Colombian and U.S. officials have given repeated assurances that the eradication push only targets large-scale coca and opium plantations operated by drug traffickers. They say the chemical used, a variant of the popular backyard fertilizer Roundup, is ecologically harmless and safe for humans.

Also See: Colombian Governors Demand Halt to Coca Fumigations InterPress Service 7/17/01 Acción Ecológica Quito, Ecuador British Chemical Company ICI Pulls Out of Cocaine War London Observer 7/1/01 86 Demonstrate Against Fumigation in Colombia at Monsanto Headquarters in St. Louis; 6 Protesters Arrested School of the Americas Watch 6/25/01 U.S. May Be Wading into a Poisonous Quagmire by Christopher Brauchli 2/24/01 Plan Colombia: Fumigation Threatens Amazon, Warn Indigenous Leaders, Scientists Inter Press Service 11/21/00 Plan Colombia's Herbicide Spraying Causing Health And Environmental Problems Inter Press Service 10/17/00 Colombians Say US Drug Spraying Is Creating A Health Crisis San Francisco Chronicle 5/1/00

But environmentalists, human rights activists and small farmers - who say their crops are also being hit - remain staunchly opposed.

Their arguments are now echoing on the political level, where governors from the main drug-producing states, Colombia's top human rights official, the nation's comptroller general and a leading lawmaker from Pastrana's own party came out this week against the policy.

Conservative Party Sen. Juan Manuel Ospina said Thursday he plans to introduce legislation sharply scaling back forced aerial fumigation, requiring more emphasis on aid to help farmers switch to legal crops, and decriminalizing small drug plots. Fumigation ``has been absolutely ineffective in reducing or eliminating the areas under cultivation,'' Ospina said in an interview.

At a congressional hearing Wednesday, Comptroller Carlos Ossa called for fumigation to be suspended altogether, saying it is proceeding without an approved environmental protection plan. Federal human rights ombudsman Eduardo Cifuentes also demanded a stop, adding that government offers of compensation for poor farmers are lagging far behind the spraying.

Earlier in the week, six governors from some of the country's main drug producing states forced a meeting with top officials in Bogota in which they warned current policies could provoke mass protests in their regions.

So far, Pastrana shows no signs of bending.

Spraying of heroin plantations continued this week in Cauca and Narino, even as those states' governors were in Bogota registering their protests. Anti-narcotics police chief Gen. Gustavo Socha blamed the criticism on ``drug traffickers'' spreading disinformation.

Any scaleback in forced eradication would likely put the government at odds with Washington, whose number one priority in Colombia is the drug war. Colombia is the world's leading cocaine exporting nation and a major supplier of heroin to the United States.

U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson on Wednesday reaffirmed aerial eradication as a ``key'' to its aid program. The embassy has commissioned a study it believes will refute claims that the spraying is causing respiratory and skin ailments among farmers and their families.

The U.S. Congress last week began consideration of an $882 million follow-up aid package floated by the Bush administration for Colombia and its Andean neighbors. Concerns about fumigation - and the military's human rights record - are expected to arise.

A leading conservation group, World Wildlife Fund, sent a letter to members of Congress last week warning that fumigation threatens Colombia's biodiversity and urging a moratorium ``at least until an adequate environmental impact study has been conducted.''

The latest controversy follows what U.S. officials are calling a successful start to the eradication push, which began late last year in Putumayo, the largest coca-growing province.

Since January, according to official figures released here this week, spraying has done away with 128,000 acres of coca - more than one-third of the amount U.S. officials estimated was growing in Colombia at the end of last year. Gonzalo de Francisco, the government's point man for Putumayo, said he has also signed up more than 40,000 peasant families in agreements to manually eradicate their coca in return for aid to grow legal crops.

Copyright © 2001 The Associated Press

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