20 NATIONS PASS CONTROVERSIAL U.S. DRUG WAR TEST

Washington --- The government certified 20 of 24 countries as fully
cooperating with U.S. anti-drug efforts Thursday, including close allies
Mexico and Colombia, despite those two nations' continuing drug-producing
and trafficking status.

On Capitol Hill, meanwhile, lawmakers called for overhauling the report
card process that often embarrasses U.S. allies.

Afghanistan and Myanmar continued their long-standing "decertified" status,
making them subject to economic penalties that will have no real effect
because both countries are under U.S. sanctions for other reasons.

Cambodia and Haiti were decertified but received a national security waiver
of economic penalties. Nigeria and Paraguay, in the same category last year
as Cambodia and Haiti, moved up to fully certified.

In addition to Mexico, Colombia, Nigeria and Paraguay, the other certified
countries were the Bahamas, Bolivia, Brazil, China, Dominican Republic,
Ecuador, Guatemala, India, Jamaica, Laos, Pakistan, Panama, Peru, Thailand,
Venezuela and Vietnam.

The certification process has been denounced in the United States by those
who consider it counterproductive and by foreign countries embarrassed by
their grades and annoyed at being judged by the world's biggest
drug-consuming nation.

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

President Bush has endorsed a move in Congress to set aside the
certification process, and he told Fox during a Feb. 16 visit to Mexico
that he would tout Fox's anti-drug efforts to U.S. lawmakers.

The report did praise Mexico's aggressive eradication program, saying that
effort, plus drought in its principal drug cultivation areas, resulted in
record low levels of opium poppy production.

But the report also noted that "Corruption of the law enforcement sector by
drug trafficking organizations remains a serious institutional problem."

The decertification of Afghanistan came despite a recent report by U.N.
drug control officers that the ruling Taliban militia had virtually wiped
out opium production since banning poppy cultivation in July. While
acknowledging that effort, the State Department said it was too early to
assess its effectiveness.

Regarding Colombia, the world's largest cocaine producer, the report said a
U.S.-backed aerial eradication program successfully treated 116,090 acres
of coca and 22,230 acres of opium poppies last year. That led to a dramatic
slowing in coca cultivation growth rates from an average of 22 percent per
year from 1997 through 1999, to 11 percent last year, the report said.

At a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, lawmakers promoted a
variety of alternatives to certification.

Rand Beers, the top State Department anti-drug official, defended
certification but left the door open for alternatives.

Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) proposed suspending certification for two
years to develop a replacement policy.

An alternative proposal by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) would retain
certification but exempt countries that sign bilateral anti-drug agreements
with the United States.