Colombia sees Obama keeping up anti-drug funding

By Luis Jaime Acosta

BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombia is confident Washington will keep providing multimillion-dollar aid to fight the drug trade in the Andean nation because any cuts would mean more cocaine reaches U.S. cities, the defense minister said on Saturday.

Washington has given Colombia more than $5 billion in military and other aid since 2000 under Plan Colombia, but Barack Obama's arrival at the White House has raised questions about whether he will continue Bush administration policies.

Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos, who travels to Washington next week to meet government officials, said he would seek to underscore progress made under the controversial Plan Colombia, part of which has involved destroying coca crops by aerial fumigation.

"I'll talk about U.S. cooperation in the fight against drugs and terrorism, how it is going to continue, and how we can strengthen that relationship and our mutual cooperation," Santos told Reuters in an interview.

Critics say Plan Colombia has failed to stop the spread of coca cultivation in recent years and point to steady cocaine output in the world's No. 1 producer of the drug.

According to U.N. figures, Colombian coca crops covered some 244,600 acres at the end of 2007 -- 27 percent more than the previous year.

But Santos said he expected the strategy to be maintained because it was backed by both Democrats and Republicans. He called it "the most successful bipartisan U.S. foreign policy of recent times."

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