The decades old conflict in Colombia is still raging and who's to blame? None other than the British supermodel Kate Moss, according to the country's vice president, Francisco Santos.

At least, that's how several British papers are interpreting his comments.

Santos was in London launching the "cocaine curse" campaign which aims to educate Westerners about the disastrous effects their cocaine habit has on Colombia, Britain's Daily Mirror reports.

Moss has fuelled the war in Colombia by glamorising cocaine, claims Santos, according to the paper.

Other newspapers also picked up on his remarks: "Cocaine Kate 'kills country'" was the headline in the tabloid Sun newspaper, while the Telegraph went with "Moss 'helps to fuel our cocaine wars'".

But the Guardian says that when the vice-president was asked about Moss's alleged cocaine use, he replied: "This is not a blame and shame game."

Also part of the Colombian entourage are five women whose lives have been profoundly affected by the war: they have been kidnapped, raped and maimed by landmines. They want to educate Westerners about their role in fuelling violence and death in Colombia.

Both sides in the war, leftwing guerrillas and rightwing paramilitaries, are funded by drugs money, so they fiercely protect their crops with landmines that in turn kill innocent civilians - four people a day, according to the Guardian.

"Every gram of coke that is consumed is soaked in Colombian blood," the paper quotes the vice-president as saying.

Sounds straightforward, but the campaign has managed to attract critics as well. One of them, Danny Kushlick, director of the drugs campaign group Transform, complains: "The global prohibition of cocaine has effectively gifted one of the largest commodity trades on earth to organised criminal cartels and economically destabilised Colombia and other parts of Latin America, as well as undermining their democratic governance."

Keith Morris, Britain's ambassador to Colombia from 1990 to 1994, agrees. He doesn't think the campaign will have any significant effect simply because it's not addressing the main cause of violence - the prohibition of drugs.

Meanwhile, mines continue to kill people in Colombia, more so than anywhere else in the world, and this includes Afghanistan, Cambodia or Chechnya, according to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, quoted by the Washington Post.

In the late 1990s, the country had 50 casualties a year. The year that ended in June saw 1,100 people killed or wounded by landmines. The Post says Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has taken a tough stance in dealing with the rebels, which in turn has led them to use more landmines.

While soldiers maimed by mines are looked after in specialist government facilities, most civilian casualties are sent to large hospitals.

The paper tells the story of one of the very few civilian rehabilitation centres, Jesus of Nazareth in Bucaramanga. Set up by a woman whose brother was killed by a mine, it caters especially for poor farmers, who are increasingly the mines' victims.

Some 30 percent of casualties are civilians and farmers make up most of them, according to the Colombian Campaign Against Mines.

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