Colombia Talks Focus on Drug Alternatives

As Congress moved forward Thursday with a $1.3-billion package of U.S. anti-narcotics aid for this nation, diplomats from Europe and elsewhere met here in the jungle with Colombian officials and Marxist guerrillas to talk about alternatives to drug production.

While the U.S. aid emphasizes military equipment and training to eradicate heroin poppies and coca, some cultivated in areas under rebel control, Europeans are being asked to pay for creating jobs that will voluntarily draw growers away from profitable illegal crops.

Narcotics production is a major source of financing for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, this country’s oldest and largest guerrilla group, so it also is an important issue at ongoing peace talks between the rebels and the government.

The conference here, which ends today, was called with the Colombian government’s cooperation as part of the peace process and drew more than 20 delegates from Europe, Canada, Japan and the United Nations. The gathering is the first time that the subject of drug production has been broached publicly during more than 18 months of peace talks.

FARC chief Manuel Marulanda, clad in camouflage and surrounded by heavily armed guerrillas, was on hand and greeted each delegate to the meeting hall. U.S. diplomats, who cut off contact with the FARC after the rebels admitted killing three American environmentalists last year, were invited to the gathering but did not attend.

Colombia’s failure to hold such discussions prior to the creation of its $7-billion peace and anti-narcotics blueprint known as Plan Colombia concerns many Europeans, diplomats have said. The lack of public consultation and Colombia’s emphasis on a military approach appear likely to cause the European Union to reject the nation’s request for $1 billion in aid, one prominent European civic leader warned Thursday.

Potential EU donors will meet with Colombian officials next Friday in Madrid and will tell them to rethink Plan Colombia, predicted Mark Jelsma, representative of the European Council of Drugs and Development, which represents 20 civic organizations working in this country.

“The Europeans do not want to bring the carrot while the United States provides the stick,” he told cheering observers, including about 200 coca farmers who also attended the conference. The farmers expressed strong opposition to fumigation and broke into chants of “Down with Plan Colombia!”

“Europe has not made public its profound rejection of the plan in its current form,” Jelsma said in a later interview. Previously, European diplomats had expressed concerns about the plan, which emphasizes eradication of drug crops while offering some alternatives for small growers.

Colombian Environmental Minister Juan Mayr Maldonado said farmers with fewer than 12 acres of coca--like most of those attending this meeting--represent only about 6% of Colombia’s drug production. He said the government’s policy for dealing with larger plantations, which represent the bulk of Colombia’s 250,000 acres of coca, calls for eradication using, for the most part, fumigation. With the U.S. aid, which was approved by the House on Thursday and is expected to win Senate approval today, larger areas of the country can be fumigated.

Still, Mayr termed Thursday’s meeting “historic, because it is the first time that the guerrillas, the government and the international community have met together to hear different points of view.”

Those viewpoints included a FARC proposal to create a pilot eradication program in the county of Cartagena del Chaira, located next to the Switzerland-size zone that the government ceded to the rebels to create a neutral area for peace talks.

The proposal calls for 36 experts to study the area and create a FARC-implemented program using education and enforcement to encourage alternatives to cultivating poppies and coca. Cost estimates were not included. However, both the government and guerrillas are clearly counting on international funds to carry out such programs.

Mayr said the meeting in Madrid is important for the peace process. However, Jelsma warned that Europeans will be skeptical about contributing if the U.S.-financed portions of Plan Colombia, from increased fumigation to the creation of two new anti-narcotics army battalions, are carried out.