A team of top-level officials on Friday wrapped up the first US visit here since the January inauguration of President George W. Bush with an 880 million-dollar disbursement of funds for a regional initiative to fight poverty as part of the anti-drug Plan Colombia.
Until now, US aid has been directed towards the military component of the 7.5 billion-dollar plan, including the aerial fumigations of the coca leaf crops, while Colombia has funded the social angle, which include a variety of education and health programs furthered by the government of President Andres Pastrana.
The US team led by Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Marc Grossman announced the money was to be used to encourage the cultivation of crops to substitute for coca leaf plantations, the raw ingredient in cocaine.
"We are continuing a project already approved by the US Congress that seeks to provide relief from the social problems in the region, but mostly to prevent drug smuggling to neighboring countries," Grossman said through an interpreter.
"The plan is to support (regional) programs that stimulate the production of legitimate crops as an alternative to cocaine," Grossman continued, in a nod to concerns from neighboring Ecuador, Panama, Peru and Venezuela, which fear a move of cocaine production and distribution to within their borders from Colombia.
Colombia also hopes to solicit financial support for the 7.5 billion-dollar Plan Colombia from the European Union, Japan and the international financial sector.
The US delegation met Wednesday with Pastrana, visited military bases in the Andes Thursday where US instructors train Colombian anti-drug battalions, and monitored the increasingly dire status of the on-again, off-again peace talks between the government and leftist guerrillas.
Grossman said Friday the United States would not get involved in a decision by Pastrana that must come before October 9 whether to extend the deadline for a Switzerland-sized "peace laboratory" ceded to Colombia's largest rebel group in 1998 to lure them to the peace table.
"I didn't make any recommendation" whether to maintain the demilitarized zone for the 16,500-strong Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, Grossman told reporters, adding Washington fully supported Pastrana's efforts to negotiate peace with the rebels.
US funds will eventually help build radar systems to detect drug-running aircraft, as well as two mobile police outposts, which will allow authorities to shadow drug producers as they sow their crops of heroin poppies and coca leaves.
Bogota also hoped to convince the United States to resume surveillance of the area in airplanes, grounded since April when a Peruvian plane shot down the aircraft of a US missionary because of a miscommunication of US intelligence.
Colombia is the world's leading producer of cocaine and an important supplier of heroin, says the United States, the leading consumer of the addictive white powders.
Since Plan Colombia's launch in December, more than 34,000 hectaresacres) of coca and poppies have been destroyed, mostly in southern Colombia. There are an estimated 120,000 hectares (297,000 acres) planted with illegal drug crops nationwide.
Grossman offered reassurances that humans exposed to the herbicide used to destroy the crops were not at risk for health problems, but expressed no opposition to further studies to confirm its safety.
"Glyphosate is safe... we would be very glad to have a third party come and review the subject," he said.
Local press reported a US official told the Colombians that ideally, Bogota should "work to fortify the three D's: democracy, development and drugs efforts."
Colombian Foreign Minister Guillermo Fernandez de Soto replied that his government needed the two T's: trade and TPS -- temporary protection status for Colombians who have remained in the United States illegally because they were afraid to return to the violence-rife Andean nation. |
