EUROPE EXPANDS AS MARKET FOR COLOMBIAN COCAINE

BOGOTA, Colombia - As cocaine use in the United States has leveled off,
trafficking to Europe from Colombia and other cocaine-producing South
American countries has picked up, increasing at a particularly rapid pace
since the mid-1990's, according to the latest American data.

Estimates by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy
indicate that up to 220 tons of cocaine flowed to Europe last year, as much
as double the amount in 1996.

The United States, in comparison, received about 330 tons last year, a
figure that has remained stable in recent years as consumption by casual
users has fallen.

"It is certainly true that a bigger portion of cocaine goes to Europe than
previously," said Klaus Nyholm, who oversees the United Nations Drug
Control Program's office in Colombia. "The U.S. was the country of cocaine
consumption par excellence, while the heroin and opiates were for Asia and
Europe. What we see now is that the markets are coming to look more and
more alike."

Europol, the European Union's fledgling police agency, said in a recent
report that 35 percent of Colombia's cocaine was winding up in the union,
entering mainly through Spain and the Netherlands. Seizures in member
nations reached 43 tons in 1999, the report said, up 37 percent from the
year before.

"There is a definite, unmistakable upward trend," said Robert Brown, acting
deputy director for supply reduction at the White House drug policy office,
which analyzes worldwide consumption and trafficking data.

The dire warning from American officials, some of whom say Europe is facing
a crisis, have irked some European officials and drug policy experts.

They question Washington's assessment and view the new data as part of its
effort to obtain more aid for Colombia's war on drugs, which was created
with American pressure and involvement.

"There is very little sympathy and understanding," Martin Jelsma, a drug
policy expert in the Netherlands, said of how Europeans view American
policy toward Colombia.

"Based on private conversations I've had this year with officials from
several European countries, the rejection of the current U.S. drug policy
approach to Colombia is growing very clearly," added Mr. Jelsma, of the
Transnational Institute, which analyzes drug use and international trafficking.

That approach relies on the American expenditure of $1.3 billion, most of
it in military assistance, for the aerial spraying of herbicides on coca
fields.

The Europeans have in general resisted supporting what they view as a
military-style strategy that they say could intensify Colombia's
37-year-long conflict with leftist rebels, who are active in coca-growing
areas and profit from the drug trade. The European Union instead recently
pledged $293 million for social development programs in Colombia's
impoverished countryside.

"There has been a tendency in Europe to look at the Colombian problem as
one of the Colombians, of course, and the United States," said a
high-ranking European official knowledgeable about drug interdiction
efforts. "The Europeans are clearly dragging their feet. They are engaging
more, yes, but from a very low level."

The Americans are irritated by Europe's stance. And in private
conversations, American officials acknowledge working diplomatic channels
to obtain more aid for Colombia.

"It's big business in Europe, and we think it's going to get a lot bigger,"
one State Department official said of the cocaine trade. "And we're trying
to convince the Europeans to get concerned about it."

Trafficking to Europe is not new. Law enforcement authorities began
detecting large-scale shipments in the 1980's, when Colombian drug cartels,
battered by aggressive law enforcement, opened new routes to that largely
untapped market. The demand in Europe, however, remained relatively modest
through the early 1990's, dwarfed by a seemingly unquenchable appetite in
the United States. That has changed.

The Colombians, for their part, have in recent months more openly pleaded
for aid from European governments. Speaking of the common goal of
eradicating drugs, President Andres Pastrana has traveled to Europe and met
here with numerous European delegations.

Other Colombians present the issue in starker terms. "They have been
ashamed to say they have a problem, even though everyone sees what is
happening," Rosso Jose Serrano, the former director of the Colombian
National Police, said of the Europeans. "It seems to me that this is what
happened in the United States, that they only took notice after the place
was inundated with cocaine."

The Europeans bristle under such criticism, saying an emphasis on treatment
and education in their own countries is a more viable solution to drug use.

European drug experts say American high-technology interdiction efforts and
harsh enforcement inside the United States have had little impact in
curtailing the flow of drugs to American users, an assertion many American
drug experts do not dispute.

The Europeans are especially strongly opposed to aerial spraying of coca
crops in Colombia, which they say fails to address the country's deep
social problems. Their opposition was highlighted in February when the
European Parliament voted 474 to 1 to reject the American-supported
spraying program in Colombia.

Europeans generally acknowledge that cocaine use, along with that of other
drugs, is up, but they say American data exaggerate the increase.

"It's a slow increase," said Ingo Michels, who runs the office for the
German drug commissioner. "The number has not been increasing dramatically
in the last 10 years."

Yet European drug policy experts also acknowledge that drug consumption
figures across the continent are not uniform and that the data are not as
reliable as in the United States, which has been analyzing drug use and
trafficking for much longer.

Europol says that between 1 and 3 percent of European adults and between 1
and 5 percent of young adults have sampled cocaine, comparable to figures
for American consumption.

American estimates of drug flow to Europe are based, in part, on the theory
that 25 percent of all drug shipments are seized or lost en route. And
since about 50 European-bound tons of cocaine were seized in 1999,
according to American figures, officials there say more than 200 tons were
shipped.

The Americans said improved European interdiction efforts had helped lead
to more seizures. But drug experts also say the high seizure rates in
Europe -- they increased by 15 percent a year in the 1990's -- signal a
rise in consumption.

By conservative estimates, according to American government reports,
European cocaine use has grown by 10 percent a year in the 1990's. That
rate, said the White House drug policy office, "is similar to the rate that
U.S. consumption rose during its greatest increase," from the mid-1970's to
mid-1980's.

Those developments come as Colombian cocaine trafficking has undergone
major changes since 1993, when the Colombian police tracked down and killed
Pablo Escobar Gaviria, the infamous leader of the Medellin cartel.

The large, flamboyant cartels of the Escobar era are gone. The Colombian
cocaine trade is instead run by small, less visible trafficking groups that
are more cautious and more willing to work with one another, said Francisco
Thoumi, a Colombian-born economist who is writing a book about the Andean
drug economy. Those groups have also come to rely on European markets more
than their predecessors.

A window into the European drug pipeline was opened in April, when the
Colombian Army tracked down Luiz Fernando da Costa, a powerful Brazilian
trafficker who had been transporting cocaine via small private planes east
to Suriname and south to Brazil. Much of the cocaine, the Colombian
military said, then wound up in Europe.

Law enforcement officials here say Mr. da Costa's operation underscored how
traffickers who have set their sights on Europe use circuitous routes,
shipping cocaine along the Pacific coast to Chile or through the heart of
South America to Argentina and Brazil. Container ships or freighters then
transport the drugs to Europe.

"All these traffickers use the path of least resistance, to get away from
enforcement," said Joseph D. Keefe, chief of operations for the Drug
Enforcement Administration in Washington.

The extra effort, the experts say, is well worth it. In American cities,
the price for a kilo of cocaine -- about 2.2 pounds -- can run below
$20,000. But in Britain, the State Department says, a kilo can bring in
$42,000 to $51,000, and in France, $35,000 to $45,000.

"You're talking about $18,000 a kilo in the United States when it's
anywhere from $45,000 to $60,000 in Europe," said an official in the United
States Embassy in Bogota who works on drug issues. "So profit is the motive."