WHETHER THE DRUG CERTIFICATION PROCESS BETWEEN THE US AND OTHER COUNTRIES
IS EFFECTIVE

ROBERT SIEGEL, host:

From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert
Siegel.

LINDA WERTHEIMER, host:

And I'm Linda Wertheimer.

Today the State Department issues its annual report card in the
international fight against drug trafficking. It lists countries that
have cooperated in counternarcotics efforts and those that have not.
The United States imposes economic sanctions on the countries deemed
uncooperative, but the president can waive sanctions to protect the
country's vital national interests. This drug certification process
is required by US law. It's increasingly resented in other countries,
even those certified as cooperative. Efforts are under way to change
the law. NPR's Ted Clark reports.

TED CLARK reporting:

A country does not have to stamp out drug trafficking to be certified
as cooperative. It simply has to try and to try hard. The State
Department recognizes how difficult it is to stop the
narcotraffickers. And so several drug-infested nations were certified
as cooperative today--Colombia, for example, and Mexico and Nigeria.
Their governments had the political will to tackle the narcotics
problem, according to the State Department. Cambodia and Haiti were
decertified, not cooperative enough. But President Bush waived
sanctions in the national interest. Afghanistan and Burma were
decertified, period, as they were last year. They remain ineligible
for most forms of US military and development aid.

In fact, there was very little change from last year in this year's
list. The countries placed under scrutiny in this drug certification
process generally hate it. They ask, 'What gives the United States
the right to judge us when the United States itself has a major drug
problem that isn't even addressed in the certification process?' Gina
Amatangelo is the fellow for international drug control policy at the
Washington Office on Latin America.

Ms. GINA AMATANGELO (Washington Office on Latin America): The drug
certification process is intended to instill cooperation, but instead,
it's deeply resented throughout the region, and rightly so. The
United States, which has the largest market for illicit drugs, issues
a scorecard for other countries' anti-drug efforts.

CLARK: The State Department acknowledges that this one-sidedness
offends other countries, and President Bush acknowledged it, too, when
he met with Colombia's President Andres Pastrana on Tuesday.

President GEORGE W. BUSH: I explained to the president that we're
fully aware of the narcotics that are manufactured in his country, but
also told him that many of them wouldn't be manufactured if our nation
didn't use them. And we gotta work together.

CLARK: Another problem with the certification process is that the
punishments are unevenly and arbitrarily applied. Again, Gina Amatangelo.

Ms. AMATANGELO: It invokes unilateral sanctions through a process that
is essentially meaningless. The countries that are typically
decertified every year are countries like Afghanistan and Burma, with
whom the United States has no relations. And on the other hand,
countries such as Mexico are never fully decertified, even if there's
evidence of high-level corruption, because the United States has
important interests.

CLARK: And the sanctions that are imposed are unilateral US sanctions,
which are not nearly as effective as a multilateral approach. For all
these reasons, there are bills in Congress now that would suspend the
certification process and require the executive and legislative
branches of government to come up with a better plan. There is a
growing consensus in Congress that change is needed and the Bush
administration is prepared to reassess the process as well. But the
current certification process did serve a useful purpose at one time,
according to Senator Joseph Biden, who sponsored the original
legislation 15 years ago.

Senator JOSEPH BIDEN (Democrat, Delaware): Once we did this--once we
did this--it has caused serious problems, but now we actually have
cooperation. Mexico wouldn't even talk to us in 1978, in 1981, in
1983--wouldn't even talk to us about the corruption in their system
and what was going on.

CLARK: Biden, a Democrat from Delaware, agrees the drug certification
process needs to be reassessed now, but says he doesn't want
revisionist historians to claim that it never worked at all. Ted
Clark, NPR News, Washington.