2,876 PEOPLE NABBED IN MONSTER DRUG BUST

32-Country Sting Largest Of Its Kind In History

MEDELLIN, Colombia -- By hiding in snake-infested bunkers and taking part
in powerboat chases worthy of James Bond, international agents have
arrested thousands of people across the Caribbean and seized tonnes of
drugs in the world's biggest anti-drug operation.

The 32-country drug bust, named Operation Liberator, was co-ordinated by
the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Powerboats, modified helicopters,
highly trained sniffer dogs, trackers and spy aircraft were used by agents
to trap suspects. Cocaine laboratories were smashed and heroin-poppy fields
burned.

Some agents had tracked their quarry for months along mountain goat trails
in Venezuela and Colombia and on tracks across the desert near the
U.S.-Mexican border.

Other agents hid in caves where tonnes of cocaine had been bagged and made
ready for loading on to ships.

Some posed as buyers, setting up meetings in restaurants with suspected
dealers or parachuted into jungle encampments located with the help of
satellites.

One trail ended in a speedboat chase complete with volleys of bullets
similar to the opening sequence of the latest Bond film, this time with the
backdrop of the South American delta rather than Docklands in London. The
agents finally succeeded in forcing the two boats laden with cocaine onto
an island, although the crews escaped.

More than 39,000 searches were carried out in three weeks of raids
unprecedented both in scale and the extent of co-operation between countries.

Michael Vigil, the Caribbean director of the DEA, said that 2,876 people
were arrested, more than 20 tonnes of cocaine seized and $64.5 million in
assets confiscated.

Agents also dismantled 94 drugs factories, seized 82,170 Ecstasy tablets
and burned a total of 23 square kilometres of poppy, coca and marijuana
cultivation.

Some of those arrested were kingpins of the drug world, such as Martires
Paulino Castro, who is accused of running a network from St. Martin in the
West Indies to New York and shipping two tonnes of Colombian cocaine to
Manhattan every month.

Named after Simon Bolivar, the champion of Latin American freedom,
Operation Liberator was the fourth and most extensive in a two-year program
of raids.

Among the goods seized in the operation were a selection of speedboats used
by smugglers, known as ``go-fasts,'' painted blue to make them difficult to
spot at sea.

At the naval base of the historic Colombian city of Cartagena, Capt. Jose
Gabriel Escobar, the commander of the Atlantic coast guard, which took part
in the operation, pointed out an impounded speedboat called Mariana, moored
alongside the naval workshop.

``This baby would not stop,'' he said. ``We have no boats fast enough to
catch her. It took four Special Forces men abseiling from a helicopter to
capture her. She was carrying half a tonne of coke.

``The drug traffickers usually scuttle the boats once the load has been
delivered,'' he says.

``What's a boat worth less than ($110,000) when you are making more than
($32 million) pure profit for even a small load?''

The operation has been heralded as beginning a new era in international
co-operation.

``This operation succeeded because of the relaxation of sovereignty issues
that many times in the past had acted as a barrier to law-enforcement
operations,'' said Mr. Vigil.