Plan Colombia kaput?

This is huge. According to The UK Independent, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has announced the so-called Plan Colombia, which has cost the US more than $3bn in the past five years, is being abandoned.

With all the criticism lately, even from ultra-conservative sources, could it really be that the White House is about to cut the Colombians off just when Uribe is asking for an additional 130 million over the 600 million already pledged for 2006?

I haven't seen any US news accounts of this but then again, you didn't see any US press when the White House released this news earlier in the year either.

The appeal for emergency cash comes in the wake of the details quietly put out by the White House during the Easter holiday about last year's spraying débâcle. On 1 January 2004 US satellite pictures showed that 281,323 acres in Colombia were under coca. The target was to reduce that area by half, so nearly 340,000 acres were sprayed with poison. But in vain.

In January, the acreage of coca bushes had increased slightly to 281,694 acres. Consequently, as Congressman Bob Menendez, leader of the Democratic caucus in the US lower house and a critic of Plan Colombia, remarked last week, the international price of cocaine has stubbornly refused to rise - as it would have if the anti-drugs effort had dented its availability worldwide.

Meanwhile, the Independent reports corruption in Colombian government service is estimated to cost $4bn a year. Add that to the recently uncovered corruption among US forces currently stationed there, where soldiers have been arrested for selling ammunition to rebel forces and exporting kilos of cocaine on military planes and the end result looks like an insurmountable PR disaster to me, particularly at time when the US budget is in such terrible straits.

A major victory for reformers if it's true. We live in hope and will be looking for further confirmation this one over the next couple of days.