BRAZIL BRACES FOR COLOMBIA DRUG FIGHT

Town Finds Itself On Front Lines

TABATINGA, Brazil - The battered minibus lurches over the last speed bump
and hurtles down the Avenue of Friendship, past a perpetually closed
blue-and-white border post, around a curve and out of Brazil.

Suddenly, the sun-baked concrete gives way to shady streets lined with
palmettos and red-flowered poincianas. Shop signs are in Spanish instead of
Portuguese, a new set of mayoral candidates stares from billboards, and the
bars tout Aguila beer instead of Antarctica.

Welcome to Leticia, Colombia. No passport, no visa, no border check. No
questions.

Brazilians, Peruvians and Colombians, pesos and reals, samba and salsa have
always mingled easily in this remote corner of Brazil's western Amazon,
some 2,500 miles northwest of Rio de Janeiro.

But now, Brazil is worried about its neighbor. There is fear that
Colombia's $7.5 billion plan to eradicate drugs may lead cocaine
traffickers, guerrillas and refugees to seek safety over the border. As
Brazilians prepare for a possible invasion, this sleepy Amazon town
suddenly finds itself in the front lines.

In September, the government began Operation Cobra, a three-year program of
heightened vigilance along Brazil's 1,020-mile jungle border with Colombia.
The federal police increased its border force from 20 agents to 180 and set
up seven bases, including one on each of the four rivers that flow from
Colombia into Brazil.

"The whole world was talking about the Colombia Plan," said Mauro Sposito,
the federal police chief in charge of the operation. "We had to do something."

With 18 boats, two planes and a helicopter, police are equipped to find and
turn back any intruders, Chief Sposito says. Miles of marshy jungle form a
natural land barrier, and police do their best to monitor movement by water
or air.

From the sky, they hunt for clandestine airstrips and occasionally land to
blow holes in them with dynamite. Congress is debating how to implement a
"shoot-down law" that would allow Brazil to fire on planes that illegally
enter its airspace.

Things aren't expected to heat up until the United States delivers a
promised $1.3 billion in aid and equipment for Colombia. But the concern
was evident in late October at a hemisphere-wide meeting of defense
ministers at Manaus, Brazil, 700 miles east of Tabatinga.

Venezuela and Ecuador complained loudly about a possible "spillover" from
the crackdown. Brazil offered to help with surveillance data from its $1.4
billion Amazon radar system - when it's finished - and tighter controls on
money laundering and chemicals used to make cocaine.

Still, most countries feel it's not their fight and they don't want to get
dragged into it. Chief Sposito notes that the Colombian guerrillas are
fighting far from Brazil, near Ecuador, and the drug kingpins are in the
cities, not the jungle. Brazilian national security is not at risk, he says.

"We took the lead so we wouldn't be surprised, but we're really not too
worried," he said. "The guerrillas and the traffickers don't want to come
here, and if Colombians come as citizens, what's the problem?"

One big problem could be refugees, said Leticia's mayor, John Alex Benjumea
Moreno.

"We are very worried about this," he said. "If there are large movements of
refugees here, it will cause a great social problem and we have no money to
deal with it."

The porous border also would make that a problem for Tabatinga, its
Brazilian neighbor. The two cities are bound by economic ties and by the
Amazon jungle stretching away on all sides.

They also share a shadowy past. Older residents recall the boom years of
the 1980s, when outsiders arrived with suitcases full of cash and Leticia,
a city of 30,000, boasted 15 bordellos. Money was easy, and violence was
routine.

"It was the bonanza of drug trafficking," conceded Mr. Benjumea, a former
radio journalist. "But we managed to do away with it. Today, it is almost
extinct here."

Colombian authorities in Leticia control trafficking with help from a U.S.
military-operated radar station nearby. The military uses the data to chase
illegal aircraft and has cut down the air movement of drugs.

The decline of the drug trade sent the area's economy into a tailspin, but
it has slowly recovered by investing in other activities, such as fishing,
electronics and import-export businesses, Mr. Benjumea says. Today, Leticia
is a sharp contrast to shabby Tabatinga.

"We are worried about Tabatinga. There still is much violence and drugs
there," Mr. Benjumea said. "Operation Cobra will be good for us. It will
bring us security."

The U.S. military also applauds.

"It's good to see that Brazil is concerned," said Steve Lucas, a spokesman
for the U.S. Southern Command in Miami. "With narco-trafficking, it's the
balloon effect - you squeeze them one place and they bulge out another."

At a narrows in the Amazon River, two hours by speedboat from Tabatinga, a
federal police barge sits at anchor near a Tikuna Indian village. This is
Base Anzol - Fishhook Base in Portuguese - one of the choke points of
Operation Cobra.

On board, an attack is already under way.

"Fresh blood," said Officer Mario Mendes, watching in amusement as a
visitor swats at a cloud of midges. "Forget the repellent. It just excites
them."

The other agents on deck laugh, and Chico, the base's pet monkey, peers up
in curiosity. At this backwater outpost, bugs and boredom prevail.

Now, Anzol is getting ready for new enemies.

"We're already on alert, and the other bases also will be stepping up
operations," said Officer Mendes, who was pulled off his assignment in the
southeastern coastal city of Macae for a tour of duty at Anzol. "You can
imagine how thrilled my wife was," he said.

Equipped with radar, radios and a 150-horsepower motor launch that can
outrun almost anything on the river, police check every vessel that goes
by, around the clock, looking for contraband, particularly drugs.

"We've found cocaine inside fish, fruits, statues of saints, soap, fuel
drums, coils of rope, shampoo, electronic appliances, tubes soldered to the
bottom of the boat," Officer Mendes said, ticking off the list on his
fingers. "These guys are very creative."

Still, some doubt Colombia's drug crackdown or Operation Cobra will change
much. Colombians and Brazilians are bonded here, and things will go on much
as before, people say.

"You can get anything you want here. Cocaine, anything," said Waldecy
Bitencourt, a waiter at the Te Contei? (translation: You Happy?) bar and
restaurant in Tabatinga. "You'd have to throw a net over the whole area to
stop it, but there's just too much money coming in and out to do that."