Bogota--Two decades after it started spraying coca fields with herbicide, Colombia is torn between continuing to wage a US-sponsored war on drugs from the sky and mounting fears of health risks.
Launched in 1994, the spraying program was long treated as sacrosanct by Colombian officials, who gladly accepted billions of dollars in funding from Washington and succeeded in slashing the cocaine production that has fueled the country's five-decade civil war.
But since the World Health Organization warned last month that glyphosate, the active ingredient in the herbicide, is "probably carcinogenic," infighting has broken out in President Juan Manuel Santos's cabinet over whether to continue the air war on coca, the raw ingredient for cocaine.
Health Minister Alejandro Gaviria said last week that Colombia should "immediately suspend" spraying -- a move vehemently opposed by Defense Minister Juan Carlos Pinzon, who said it would "give criminals the upper hand."
The row erupted just as US Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken paid a visit to Colombia, which the United States sees as one of its closes allies in the region.
The South American country has received $9 billion in US funding since 1999 under "Plan Colombia," a military and economic cooperation program aimed at fighting drug trafficking and the long-running insurgencies by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN).
Aerial spraying, carried out with American planes and pilots, is a key component of the plan. Blinken urged Colombia to continue using glyphosate, "the most efficient way to fight illegal crops."
He said the chemical -- sold by US biotechnology company Monsanto under the brand name Roundup -- was an agricultural product in widespread use in the United States and Europe.
"Glyphosate is used in every state in my country, and believe me, we would have taken measures if there were any problem with it," he told El Tiempo newspaper.
AFP
