GUATEMALA SEES ORGANIZED CRIME AS SECURITY THREAT

Narcotics: Smugglers, Flush With Profits From A New Contraband, Have Become
A Formidable Force.

GUATEMALA CITY--Powerful organizations that already control smuggling,
auto theft and arms trafficking in Central America are using those
established networks to transport illegal drugs, U.S. and regional
officials warn.

The infusion of drug money is allowing criminal enterprises to become
a force that can threaten national security, worrying military and
church officials as well as government authorities.

"Our Central America has become a corridor for drugs, guns and
[stolen] religious art," said Bishop Mario Rios Montt, director of the
Archdiocese Office on Human Rights in this capital. Criminal
organizations that control this illegal trade are becoming the major
threat to human rights in a region that has barely left behind brutal
military regimes, he said.

Here in Guatemala, officials warn that narcotics traffickers aligned
with local organized crime are turning the country into a virtual
warehouse for Colombian cocaine bound for the United States and Europe.

Five years ago, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration estimated
that 50 tons of cocaine passed through Guatemala each year. Now, some
anti-narcotics officials believe, that quantity has quadrupled.

"Cocaine transshipment through Guatemala is expected to continue to
increase, with no letup projected in the foreseeable future,"
predicted the most recent U.S. State Department report on
international anti-drug efforts.

Drug profits have strengthened organized crime to the point that
smugglers are ready to engage in combat with authorities, officials
said.

Early this year, a tractor-trailer rig headed to western Guatemala
from the Caribbean port of Puerto Barrios, an established narcotics
transshipment hub, drove through a customs roadblock. When customs
officials pursued the truck, the driver first tried to run them off
the road.

Then the rig stopped and several men scrambled out, submachine guns
drawn. The outgunned customs officials gave up the pursuit.

"That truck was not carrying cookies," Defense Minister Brig. Gen.
Juan de Dios Estrada said during a recent interview.

Also this year, a car thief stole a Guatemalan army vehicle and killed
the officer who was driving it.

Estrada has become so concerned about the threat from organized crime
that he is working with customs officials, police and private
businesses to try to fight smugglers, one of the most visible arms of
the networks. That is a significant change in position for the armed
forces, whose members themselves have previously been accused of links
to criminal networks.

Four years ago, former Gen. Cesar Augusto Garcia Gonzalez was fired as
vice minister of defense amid accusations that he was involved in a
smuggling and robbery ring allegedly run by Alfredo Moreno Molina, a
former military intelligence officer. Sixteen others, including three
colonels, police officers, and customs officials also were dismissed
in connection with the ring.

For the last six months, soldiers have been assigned to provide
customs officials with security at mobile roadblocks when help is
requested by civilian authorities. Often, authorities act on tips from
business owners who have noticed suspicious movements.

So far, the operations have uncovered smuggled goods that evaded $461
million in import taxes, an aide to Estrada said. They have found no
illegal drugs.

Still, Estrada said, "there is a relationship between smuggling and
narcotics trafficking. We are making it less feasible to move
narcotics overland."

While American drug enforcement efforts focus on sea routes for
illegal shipments, U.S. Customs Service officials have worked to
organize their foreign counterparts into multi-agency, anti-narcotics
task forces similar to the nascent effort in Guatemala.

Edward Moriarty, who runs the project for U.S. Customs, says drug
traffickers are looking for ways to smuggle relatively small amounts
of narcotics with minimal risk of getting caught.

Officials in Costa Rica, long considered a model of stability and
safety in Central America, are concerned enough about the problem that
they have joined six other Latin American countries in the
U.S.-sponsored program to detect smuggled goods, including illegal
drugs, in legitimate shipments. In the last five years, the program
has recovered 240,000 pounds of illegal drugs, about half of them
cocaine, Moriarty said.

Central Americans are equally concerned with the implications of
organized crime networks that stretch beyond illegal drugs.

"These are not just little groups without capabilities or means," Rios
Montt said. In the days before Christmas, criminals broke into the
cathedral in Guatemala City and another downtown church, stealing a
silver statue of Christ, a silver facade for an altar and a jeweled
Eucharist holder more than 3 feet tall.

The thieves needed both the means to move such large, heavy objects
and a market for them, Rios Montt said.

Military intelligence indicates that criminal organizations operating
in Guatemala are part of networks that have international ties,
Estrada said.

Further, sources close to the investigation--who are prohibited from
public comment--now believe that the unsolved 1998 slaying of Rios
Montt's predecessor, Juan Jose Gerardi, was an act of organized crime.

"Clearly, there were masterminds and someone else who carried out the
murder," Rios Montt said.

"Crime has invaded all levels of society," he said, "to the point that
we are coming to a real destruction of rights. All rights are violated
with impunity."

After decades of disagreeing on human rights issues during the 35-year
civil war that ended in 1996, Guatemalan church and military officials
have found common ground in their concern about organized crime. In
Estrada's estimation, criminal organizations flush with drug money
have become a threat to national security.

"The lack of control makes us vulnerable," he said. However, he noted:
"We are still in time to bring this under control."