Colombians claim biggest cocaine bust in history

BOGOTA, Colombia - Colombian authorities seized US$350 million ($493 million) worth of cocaine stashed on a jungle riverbank by far-right paramilitaries, police said on Friday, in what they called the biggest cocaine bust in history.

Police and the Navy confiscated 13.8 tonnes of cocaine hidden on the banks of the River Mira, near the Pacific Ocean port of Tumaco in southern Colombia, in an operation that ended early on Friday.

With a street value of about US$25,000 per kilogram (2.2 pounds) in the United States, where police think the drugs were headed, the cocaine would sell for a total of about US$350 million.

"This is the biggest haul ever seized in the world in a single operation, in a single day and in a single place," the head of Colombia's National Police, General Jorge Castro, told a news conference.

The drugs belonged to members of the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia, an outlawed far-right militia known by its Spanish initials AUC that has killed thousands of people in its brutal campaign against Marxist rebels, police said.

The seizure came just as the US Congress debates a Bush administration request for US$600 million in aid money for Colombia's anti-cocaine effort.

Some congressmen have complained that there is no evidence showing the amount of cocaine on US streets has declined despite more than US$3 billion in assistance to Colombia since 2000.

Armed agents made five arrests and seized nine assault rifles, communications equipment and eight boats in the operation.

Working with the United States, Colombian authorities have significantly increased seizures in recent years, and confiscated 148 tonnes of cocaine last year.

The lawlessness caused by a four-decade-long guerrilla war has helped make Colombia the world's largest producer of the drug, with the US government estimating the country's criminals produced about 430 tonnes in 2004.

But this is down from about 700 tonnes in 2001, thanks to a US-backed programme of spraying illegal coca crops.

Critics of the programme point out that US street prices for cocaine have hardly budged over the period, indicating that as much as ever is probably flowing into the country.

Both the AUC and Marxist rebels draw on cocaine money to buy weapons in a conflict that claims thousands of lives a year. But, while they are bloody rivals on the battlefield, the AUC often co-operates with the rebels in the drug trade.

The paramilitaries probably bought the cocaine found on the River Mira from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, police said.

- REUTERS