CUBA: SMUGGLE AND YOU'LL DIE

Nation Steps Up Enforcement Of Trafficking Laws

HAVANA - As drug seizures in Cuba rise to unprecedented levels, the
island's justice minister warned Tuesday that traffickers who smuggle
drugs in the land of Fidel Castro face the ultimate punishment.

"For humanitarian reasons, the death penalty doesn't please us. But
the message gets through to drug traffickers," said Justice Minister
Roberto Diaz.

Cuban authorities last year seized more than 13 tons of drugs, more
than they've taken in a single year since at least 1995. Drug-laden
boats and planes coming from Colombia and other nations increasingly
use Cuban airspace and territorial waters to hide from authorities as
they head toward the Bahamas and the United States.

"To us, it's an external problem," Mr. Diaz said at an event marking
the worldwide fight against trafficking. "We're not a drug-consuming
nation, and we're not a drug-production nation."

Cuba, however, does lie in the path between Colombia, one of the
world's most notorious trafficking nations, and the United States,
the hemisphere's largest consumer of illicit drugs.

And because some drug trafficking syndicates are so powerful - more
powerful than the governments of some small nations - Cuban
authorities are naturally concerned, said Abelardo Moreno, vice
minister of the Foreign Relations Ministry.

So the country in recent years has stepped up its pursuit of
traffickers and arrested 259 foreigners on drug charges since 1995.
And while none has been executed, Cuban officials say they are
serious.

"We're not passive observers," said Col. Oliverio Montalvo, chief of
Cuba's national anti-drug agency.

Cuban officials say they would like to work with the United States in
the drug fight. Some U.S. law enforcement officials have said they'd
like the same thing. But politics, officials from both countries say,
always seem to get in the way.

In the mid-1990s, the Clinton administration had planned to launch a
form of drug-agent diplomacy - seeking closer law enforcement ties as
a way of calming the Cold War hostilities between the two countries,
a former White House official said.

Then on Feb. 24, 1996, the Cubans shot down two civilian planes
flying off the coast, killing four anti-Castro activists. The drug
diplomacy plan was shelved, never to see light again, the former
official said.

In a sign of modest progress, Cuba in 1999 agreed to allow a U.S.
Coast Guard anti-drug specialist to work out of Havana. Just how well
that's going is hard to know. The specialist declined to comment, as
did a spokesman for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in San
Juan, Puerto Rico, which oversees counternarcotics in the region.

Meanwhile, drug seizures in Cuba have climbed from 5.7 tons in 1995
to 8.8 tons in 1999 to 13 tons last year, Cuban government figures
indicate.

In a July 1999 speech, President Fidel Castro urged the United
States. to cooperate against drugs and leave the socialist system
alone.

Once socialism goes, "this island would become the most dangerous
center of corruption, gambling, drug trafficking and crime in the
world," Mr. Castro said.

For now, Cuba is a small player in the drug trade. From July 1998 to
June 1999, for instance, only about 2 tons of cocaine flowed through
Cuba. That compared to nearly 60 tons for Haiti, 35 tons for the
Bahamas, almost 18 tons for Jamaica and 6 tons for the Dominican
Republic, according to a U.S. estimate of cocaine movement.

Anti-Castro activists, conservative Republicans and others have
contended that high-level Cuban officials are complicit in the drug
trade. They recall the case of Arnaldo Ochoa, an army general and
hero of the Cuban revolution. He and three other military officials
were executed after being found guilty of trafficking in 1989.

But DEA officials have said that in recent years, they've found no
significant drug-related corruption on the island.