PRIME MINISTER: DRUG CARTELS THREATEN TRINIDAD

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad (Reuters) - Insurgent groups within Trinidad and
Tobago have teamed up with drug cartels to try to destabilize the oil-rich
southeastern Caribbean nation, its prime minister told troops participating
in U.S.-Caribbean military exercises on Wednesday.

Prime Minister Basdeo Panday said his government's actions against drug
traffickers had prompted reprisals.

"They have retaliated by targeting government, law enforcement officers and
other public officials. Domestic terrorist and insurgent groups and agents
are allied with the drug cartels in efforts to destabilize the state,"
Panday said.

He spoke at the end of a week of military exercises involving the defense
forces of several Caribbean nations and the U.S. Southern Command.

As evidence of destabilization efforts, he said police had recently
intercepted two luxury sport utility vehicles that had been converted into
deadly attack vehicles with rocket-launching capabilities, the first of a
planned fleet of such vehicles that were to have been imported to Trinidad
and Tobago from the United States.

He said cocaine and marijuana use in his nation had increased, as had
crimes related to drug trafficking.

"The murder of citizens and state witnesses has become a distressing fact
of life," Panday said.

Panday, who is also national security minister, said Trinidad and Tobago, a
nation of 1.2 million in the southeastern Caribbean near the coast of
Venezuela, had become a strategic transshipment point for South American
cocaine in transit to North America and Europe.

He urged local governments to target those who would destroy their
democracies through drug trafficking and money laundering.

Panday did not identify the insurgent groups allegedly working with drug
traffickers.

Trinidad entered a comprehensive counter-narcotics alliance with the United
States in 1995. It has also attacked the drug distribution and money
laundering networks with legislation allowing the state to seize the assets
of convicted drug traffickers and by extraditing suspected drug traffickers
to other nations to stand trial.

In 1990, Muslim rebels staged a coup attempt in Trinidad and Tobago,
seizing the parliament building and taking 50 hostages. The captives
included then-Prime Minister Arthur Robinson, who was shot in the legs and
tied to explosives before the rebels surrendered six days later.