Colombian drug crop spraying halted

The US-financed programme is the world's largest

By Jeremy McDermott in Bogota

A circuit judge in the Colombian capital, responding to a case brought by indigenous Indian communities, has ordered the suspension of the controversial US-inspired drug eradication programme.

Judge Gilberto Reyes has done what tens of thousands of protestors, farmers and Marxist guerrillas have failed to achieve - he has halted the aerial fumigation of drug crops in Colombia.

Over 50,000 hectares were sprayed this year

The United States, in its war against drugs, has introduced and financed the world's largest programme of its kind, spraying over 50,000 hectares of Colombia with powerful weedkillers this year alone.

The indigenous communities who brought the case insist the spraying is damaging their health and the environment.

Other opponents of the spraying, like the coca farmers who grow the raw material for cocaine, insist the fumigation - which kills all plant life - is leaving peasants, many of whom live below the poverty line, totally ruined.

Resistance

Marxist guerrillas, who control some 40% of Colombia, where much of the drugs are grown, have attempted to resist the US campaign militarily as they earn hundreds of millions of dollars from the drug trade every year.

But with one ruling, Judge Reyes has stopped the fumigation in all areas where there are indigenous tribes - that is huge swathes of Colombia - on the grounds that it violates the right to life and the environment.

The US has yet to make a statement on the ruling, although earlier this week the American ambassador in Bogota, Anne Patterson, warned the Colombian Government not to halt the fumigation programme.

President Andres Pastrana has said his legal experts were studying the ruling and he has not yet decided whether he will call off the spraying. He has 48 hours to comply with the ruling.