U.N. TO SEEK SUPPORT FOR ANTI-DRUG EFFORT

U.S., Other Nations Balk Over Plan to Give Aid to Afghanistan, Burma, Colombia

The United Nations plans to seek new international backing next week for
the most ambitious counternarcotics effort in its history, but the United
States and other wealthy nations are resisting pleas to fund the program
partly because it would spend billions of dollars in some of the world's
most corrupt or repressive nations, such as Afghanistan, Burma and
Colombia, according to U.S. and U.N. officials.

The overall objective of the plan -- to eradicate the world's entire
production of heroin, cocaine and marijuana over 10 years -- is likely to
win the endorsement of more than 30 heads of state and the representatives
of 130 other nations, including President Clinton, now slated to attend a
special June 8-10 meeting at U.N. headquarters in New York, the officials
said.

The cost of the U.N. counterdrug plan has been estimated at roughly $3
billion to $4 billion over the next ten years, a roughly fourfold increase
from what all governments combined would spend over the next decade at
present levels to promote the substitution of legal crops for illegal ones
in key producing nations, the officials said.

But Clinton's top counterdrug aides have advised U.N. officials that
Washington is unwilling to commit substantial new U.S. funds to the effort
on grounds that the program remains unformed, has yet to attract support
from key European and Middle Eastern donors, and would probably provoke
political opposition at home from human rights activists and critics of the
United Nations.

"We are very supportive of the concept, but the hesitancy, the skepticism
comes from the feeling that you just can't do it, that it is very
unrealistic," said a White House official involved in planning for the U.N.
conference.

"You have governments that are difficult to deal with and [a] lack of
governments in other countries. It is a challenge, to say the least," he said.

Pino Arlacchi, a former Italian lawmaker who was appointed in September as
the United Nations' chief counternarcotics official, nonetheless vows to
pursue the plan. He told associates that the U.N. meeting should be "a
turning point for the world to go forward with renewed energy on drug
control," by embracing not only a vigorous new crop substitution effort but
also a new series of related law enforcement and countertrafficking
initiatives.

Arlacchi's plan, which has been sketched out in a 170-page report entitled
"Strategy for Coca and Opium Poppy Elimination," calls for promoting rural
development and crop substitution to create legitimate employment
alternatives to drug production in the nine principal growing nations for
those two drugs: Afghanistan, Burma, Laos, Colombia, India, Mexico,
Pakistan and Vietnam.

According to U.N. estimates, the amount of land devoted to growing coca
leaf or opium poppy in all these countries is just 4,500 square kilometers,
or half the area of Puerto Rico. That gives supporters of the program hope
that concentrated social development efforts can overcome the low success
rate of traditional crop substitution efforts, which many experts say have
failed due to the lack of infrastructure, such as roads and facilities for
handling legal crops.

Under the U.N. plan, progress in crop substitution would be monitored by
reconnaissance satellites and through periodic inspections on the ground.

In a telephone interview after his arrival in New York yesterday, Arlacchi
said details of the plan can be fleshed out in the next year in conjunction
with new appeals for funds.

"The main difficulty [to overcome] . . . is a decade of pessimism,
skepticism about the sheer possibility to be successful in the field of
drugs," Arlacchi said. "Particularly in Western Europe [there is a
widespread view] . . . that everything that is being done is wrong or
unsuccessful."

Arlacchi, who was appointed to his job after leading his government's
successful effort to curb the influence of the Mafia, compared the remarks
he hears now to claims at the beginning of the 1980s that "we were starting
an impossible mission" in the fight against organized crime because victory
would mean altering longstanding culture.

He said that, already, a modest investment in the social and economic
development of drug-growing regions in Pakistan has cut opium production
from 800 to 20 tons a year.

The key, he said, was the introduction of a crop of off-season onions that
could be marketed throughout the year. Similar programs have achieved
modest successes in Peru and Thailand.

Arlacchi's tenure at the United Nations has been distinguished in part by
his desire to try to work out new counterdrug arrangements with the
political rulers of Afghanistan and Burma, the two countries that together
cultivate 80 percent of the world's illicit opium poppies but remain in
virtual diplomatic isolation.

He has struck a deal with the leaders of the Taliban, the Islamic extremist
party that now controls more than two-thirds of Afghanistan, to fund a
series of small-scale development projects, such as the reconstruction of a
factory in the province of Kandahar that will provide work for thousands of
impoverished local citizens. The estimated $7 million cost of the project
is to be drawn in part from past contributions by the United States, U.N.
officials said.

Last month, Arlacchi organized a similar pilot project in Burma, a country
that the ruling military junta renamed Myanmar after it seized control from
an elected political party in 1989. Washington has pledged $5 million
toward the $15 million cost of the project, which is meant to promote rural
development in that country's Shan state.

In both nations, Arlacchi's idea is to create employment alternatives to
drug-related work; and if the initial efforts are successful, he wants to
spend an estimated $500 million there over the next decade. That would
amount to a major new burst of foreign aid for both nations.

But Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and other top U.S. officials
have said that Washington generally opposes substantial new aid to
Afghanistan so long as Taliban ideologues block women from access to
education, jobs and health care. An influential Republican staff aide on
Capitol Hill has also vowed to block funding for the Burma project.

"The answer will be unequivocally no," said the staff member, who asked not
to be named. "This is a country with a 400,000-man army and no external
threat. It has no function but to continue to repress its own people. They
have the capacity to carry out counterdrug campaigns if they want to."

Moreover, the source said, "big, sweeping public relations stunts are not
the way to go" in dealing with the global drug issue.

Maureen Aung-Thwin, who directs the Soros Foundation's Open Society
Institute Burma Project, said she, too, is skeptical that much progress can
be made in Burma under the military government and worried that it would
try to divert the aid toward military purchases.

Arlacchi said he was aware of the criticism, but that he remains optimistic
that Washington will eventually provide additional funds.

"It is not by chance that drugs are produced in very remote and difficult
countries," he said. "[But] what is the alternative? To do nothing and just
blame these countries?"

© Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company

Checked-by: Richard Lake