Washington, March 3 Ahead of a White House meeting with his Colombian counterpart Ivan Duque, US President Donald Trump said that the controversial method of aerial fumigation was crucial to the South American nation's drug-eradication efforts.
"Well, you're going to have to spray. If you don't spray, you're not going to get rid of them. So you have to spray, with regard to the drugs in Colombia," Efe news quoted Trump as saying here on Monday.
Duque, meanwhile, said in that respect that aerial fumigation of coca crops was an important part of a broader anti-narcotics strategy.
"Let me add something that's very important. We have to combine all the elements that we have. Obviously, precision spraying, but also the record highs that we reached in 2019 on manual eradication and also dismantling the drug cartels.
"So we have to work on all the elements, and we have to be very strong against crime. That crime is hurting our people and it's hurting people everywhere. And we need to work jointly in that effort, as we have been doing so far," he added.
The Colombian President also recalled that cultivation of 'coca' - the raw material of cocaine - fell in 2018 for the first time in six years.
He was referring to an estimate by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, which said last June that total coca crop cultivation in Colombia had experienced a minor drop of 1,000 hectares (from 209,000 hectares in 2007 to 208,000 hectares in 2018).
Last December, the US expressed its support for a draft Colombian presidential decree on the resumption of aerial fumigation of coca crops with glyphosate or another type of herbicide following a four-year hiatus.
That proposal, which is controversial because a 2015 study by the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer found that glyphosate is likely a human carcinogen, was under public discussion until Jan. 30.
The two Presidents spoke briefly to reporters in the Oval Office, saying that they also would discuss the ongoing crisis in Venezuela.
( With inputs from )