US REPORTS SEIZING 8.8 TONS OF COCAINE

SAN DIEGO - US authorities unloaded 8.8 tons of cocaine yesterday that they
said was smuggled on a rusty fishing boat off the coast of Mexico. It was
the government's fourth-largest such seizure ever.

The Coast Guard said a Navy destroyer with a Coast Guard law enforcement
unit on board seized the boat Feb. 24 about 250 miles west of Acapulco.
They towed the boat to San Diego.

The seizure, which the Coast Guard said was the government's
fourth-largest, capped what the agency called one of its most productive
weeks of antidrug patrols.

In six days, the Coast Guard - from Miami to the Caribbean, and in the
Pacific from Mexico to Washington state - seized 28,845 pounds, or nearly
14.5 tons, of cocaine, about what it confiscated in all of 1996.

''We've never had a week like this where our border has been assaulted all
the way from the Bahamas to Seattle,'' said Commander Jim McPherson.

Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta praised the antidrug effort.

''Those engaged in drug trafficking are attempting to penetrate all of our
borders,'' he said near a Coast Guard pier, where the 8.8 tons of cocaine
were stacked neatly in large blocks on wooden pallets.

The 10 crew members of the Belize-flagged boat, the ''Forever My Friend,''
will face drug smuggling charges that carry a minimum 10-year sentence and
a maximum of life in prison, US Attorney Gregory Vega said. They were to
appear in federal court in San Diego today.

Eight of the men are from Nicaragua, one is from El Salvador, and one from
Ukraine. The cocaine was hidden in a secret compartment, buried under ice
and fresh fish, authorities said.

Agents wearing surgical masks and gloves and protective white jumpsuits
spent yesterday morning unloading the large blocks of cocaine from the
Forever My Friend. Federal agents with automatic weapons guarded it on the
pier.

The string of recent seizures reflects a general increase in the amount of
cocaine seized at sea by the Coast Guard working with the Navy, Customs
Service, Drug Enforcement Administration, and other federal agencies.

In 1999, the Coast Guard seized a record 55 tons of cocaine, which broke
the previous high of 40.7 tons. Then last year, the agency captured 66 tons.

The Coast Guard estimates that it catches only a small fraction of US-bound
cocaine, which is generally produced in Colombia and shipped either through
the Caribbean or via the Pacific to Mexico to be smuggled overland into the
United States through the Southwest.

''We've put a dent in it, but we certainly haven't cut off the flow or
driven the price of cocaine through the roof,'' said Captain Joseph Conroy,
chief of the agency's law enforcement division.

Navy ships on antidrug patrols travel with Coast Guard contingents on board
because the US military is prohibited from law enforcement activities. The
Coast Guard, which is part of the Transportation Department, faces no such
restriction.

During the string of seizures from Feb. 21 to Feb. 27, the agencies
captured 5,154 pounds from a Canadian trawler off Seattle on Feb. 21 and
3,920 pounds from a small powerboat north of San Juan on Feb. 25.

In all, 24 people were arrested over the six-day period.