President Alan Garcia said Friday he will attend the Feb. 15 drug summit with President Bush in Colombia, reversing his earlier decision to boycott the meeting if U.S. troops were still in Panama. Garcia said he decided to go to the meeting after Bush announced his intention to withdraw by the end of the month troops sent to Panama to remove Gen. Antonio Manuel Noriega from power. Presidents Virgilio Barco of Colombia and Jaime Paz Zamora of Bolivia are also set to attend the summit, which is to take place in Cartagena, Colombia. They are to discuss strategies to fight drug trafficking in their respective countries. The three Andean nations are the source of most of the world supply of cocaine, most of which is sold in the United States. Garcia cited the ``gravity of the drug problem'' and said he will go with a ``decisive and positive proposal'' to combat trafficking. Bolivia and Peru produce 90 percent of the world's coca leaf. Most of Peru's coca harvest is transformed into paste and shipped to Colombia, where it is refined into cocaine. Bolivian traffickers formerly did the the same but increasingly are producing refined cocaine and smuggling it directly to the United States and Europe, according to U.S. drug officials. The drug trade brings billions of dollars in clandestine revenues into the three countries each year. Bush last year proposed spending $2.2 billion over the next five years to fight the drug trade in the three Andean nations. Among the topics the four presidents are expected to discuss are military and police aid to fight smugglers and leftist guerrillas tied to drug trafficking, crop eradication and substitution programs, cooperation in stopping the laundering of drug money, and the extradition of drug suspects. Garcia had pulled out of the meeting after U.S. troops landed in Panama Dec. 20 to topple Noriega, saying, ``I cannot meet with the leader of an invading nation.'' Peru had planned to send a high-level delegation to the summit even if Garcia did not go. On Jan. 7, Garcia said he would attend the summit if U.S. troops were first withdrawn. In announcing his decision to go, Garcia said Friday he trusted Bush's promise to withdraw the troops by the end of February. ``This removes one of the obstacles in the way of my attendance,'' Garcia told reporters at the Government Palace. ``I have no reason to doubt the announcement he made before Congress.'' Bush said Wednesday in his State of the Union address that all ``additional troops'' sent to Panama would be withdrawn by the end of the month. About 27,000 U.S. troops were in Panama during the invasion. About 13,000 troops had been stationed at U.S. bases there before the invasion, and the same number are to remain after the February pullout. Garcia has been highly critical of the U.S. actions in Panama, and charged the United States intended to break the Panama Canal treaties of 1977, which call for the United States to cede control of the Panama Canal at the end of the century. Garcia also recalled his ambassador in Washington and suspended for one week joint anti-drug operations with U.S. drug agents and Peruvian police in protest.
