Colombia's coca fumigation riles Andean neighbors

SAN MIGUEL, Colombia, Feb 24 (Reuters) Six times in four years Colombian anti-narcotics pilots fumigated Gilberto's farm, but that has not stopped him growing coca leaves that end up as cocaine on US and European streets.

Hidden in rural Putumayo near Ecuador's frontier, he toils in a makeshift lab turning coca into paste ready for sale to feed his family and ignoring the US-funded campaign that has put President Alvaro Uribe at odds with his Andean neighbors.

''We are using what the fumigation left us,'' Gilberto said, sluicing coca leaves in a plastic barrel. ''We have to work with a little coca, what else can we do?'' Fumigation has been a pillar of US aid to Colombia since 2000, but spraying is now testing ties between Washington ally Uribe and leftists in Ecuador and Venezuela, who see eradication as US interference and spillover from Colombia's conflict.

Putumayo shows the complexity Colombia faces.

Washington credits the campaign with destroying illicit crops and reducing violence. But some analysts and local officials say years of spraying has failed to stamp out coca or offer farmers enough alternatives to wean them off the profitable leaf.

A remote region once dominated by guerrillas, Putumayo was the heart of the multimillion dollar Plan Colombia program to crush rebels and destroy the province's coca, estimated at more than 148,260 acres six years ago.

Gone are the coca bushes that once lined Putumayo's highway, an unpaved road winding through the jungly province, where increased troop presence has also forced back the FARC rebels who use the drug trade for revenues.

Putumayo officials and farmers acknowledge fumigation has destroyed coca, but say it also hits legal crops, drives illicit plants into remoter areas and forces residents from their plots, sometimes across the frontier.

''It's a short cut. The alternative is what they call nation-building, it's a hard sell because it costs a lot and you don't see results immediately,'' said Adam Isacson, Colombia expert at Washington's Center for International Policy.

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