SILVIA, Colombia, July 23 (Reuter) President Ernesto Samper on Wednesday
criticised delays in delivery of promised U.S. counternarcotics aid for what
he termed Colombia's ``often lonely and misunderstood'' war on drugs.

He delivered the thinly veiled attack on Washington at a ceremony in which
2,000 Guambiano Indians pledged to end the illegal cultivation of opium
poppies in the mountains which tower above this Andean village in southwest
Cauca province.

``The struggle we are undertaking is sometimes much too lonely and
misunderstood,'' Samper said in reference to Washington's decision to
``decertify'' Colombia for a second consecutive year for its failure to crack
down hard enough on drug trafficking converting it into a virtual pariah
state.

Without naming the United States, Samper talked of ``delays in handing over
aid'' a guarded reference to a recent U.S. refusal to deliver a $70
million counternarcotics package to the Colombian army without guarantees
that the military would improve its dismal human rights record.

At the ceremony, Guambiano chief, Henry Tunubala, clad like his fellow
villagers in a traditional blue and purple robe, said his community had
eradicated 1,300 acres (540 hectares) of opium poppies by hand.

Samper said his government would donate a package worth about $1 million,
including 7,200 acres (3,000 hectares) of land, to a crop diversification
programme in the community to help the Guambianos grow legal cash crops.

The community first turned to growing poppies, used in heroin production,
about five years ago as their traditional crops of potatoes, yucca and garlic
began to dwindle.

Drug traffickers paid growers as much as $2,000 every four months for the gum
of the plant they dubbed the ``cursed flower,'' but the Guambianos decided to
halt their illicit trade when it began to create rifts in village life.

``We hope this historic act will serve as an example for the consumer
countries to fight harder against the drug use of their own youth,'' Samper
said.

Tunubala welcomed Samper's expression of support but added a note of caution:
``We have been asking for (government) aid for years but all we've gotten are
empty promises.''

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