REPORT CARD DAY FOR DRUG COUNTRIES

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Mexican President Vicente Fox calls it a "sham" and many
other Latin American leaders see it the same way.

Their target is the annual State Department process of evaluating the drug
fighting performance of some two dozen countries around the world. Thursday
is report card day for this year.

Countries graded as fully cooperative are "certified" for their good
behavior, while subpar performers are "decertified" and can face economic
penalties.

Also Thursday, the State Department was planning to issue a report on the
illicit drug situation in all countries worldwide, with particular emphasis
on production and the extent to which they are used as transit points.

"Certification is more than an affront to Mexico and to other countries. It
is a sham that should be denounced and canceled," Fox said last year.

He wants an alternative process that would end the U.S. "unilateral
approach" and substitute it with a cooperative process involving producers
and consumers, the largest of which is the United States.

The overwhelming majority of countries on the list are expected to be
certified, including Mexico and the world's largest cocaine source,
Colombia. Both are closely allied politically with the United States.

The State Department's top counternarcotics official, Rand Beers, told a
Senate panel Wednesday that Colombian coca production increased last year
ahead of a U.S-funded crackdown, but the rise wasn't as sharp as in
previous years.

"This estimate may -- may -- indicate that the explosion of coca that has
ravaged Colombia recently is finally peaking," Beers said.

President Bush has given Fox his blessing for Mexico's counterdrug policy.
He said during a visit to Mexico on Feb. 16 that he planned to tell U.S.
lawmakers that Fox "will do everything in his power to root out the drug
lords and to halt drug trafficking as best as he possibly can."

Bush, hoping to please Fox, endorsed a move in Congress to set aside the
certification process, but the lawmakers failed to act ahead of Thursday's
deadline. Proponents hope to take action before the March 2002 deadline.

Among countries that have been decertified for years is Afghanistan. But
two weeks ago, U.N. drug control officers said the Taliban religious
militia had virtually wiped out opium production in Afghanistan -- once the
world's largest producer -- since banning poppy cultivation in July.

Heroin trafficking has put Myanmar on the decertified list for many years
- -- and subjected it, with Afghanistan, to economic penalties. In 2000,
Cambodia, Haiti, Nigeria and Paraguay also did not meet the criteria for
certification, but they were not penalized because all are considered
politically important.