EUROPEAN MARKET EXPANDS FOR COLOMBIAN COCAINE

BOGOTA, Colombia, May 28 - 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."