210 MILES FROM PACIFIC OCEAN, DRUG SMUGGLERS TRY TO BUILD SUB

FACATATIVA, Colombia, Sept. 7 - Uncovering a scheme worthy of Jules Verne, authorities here say that Colombian drug traffickers have been building a sophisticated submarine to smuggle cocaine, reportedly with help from American and Russian criminals.

The police stumbled upon the half-built submarine on Wednesday night in a warehouse outside Bogota, 7,500 feet up in the Andes and 210 miles from any port. The 100-foot vessel could have crossed an ocean, surfaced off Miami or other coastal cities and surreptitiously unloaded its drug cargo, the police said.

"In the 30-odd years I have been in law enforcement, I have never seen anything like this," Leo Arreguin, the director of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration in Colombia, said today. "We're talking about being able to load up to 200 tons of cocaine in this submarine."

Top officials flocked to the warehouse today to marvel at the lengths that Colombian drug traffickers, who supply more than 80 percent of the world's cocaine and a rising share of its heroin, will go to export their illicit products.

The police were led to the find by suspicious residents nearby, who had seen Americans hanging around the warehouse, which is in a cow pasture off a highway near Facatativa, a Bogota suburb.

When the authorities arrived, no one was around. No arrests have been made.

"This is very high-tech," said Capt. Ismael Idrobo of the Colombian Navy, gazing up at the reddish submarine, which stood in three sections on lengths of railroad track. "Look at the rudders and the pressurized double hull. This could easily travel 100 meters under the surface of the ocean."

Capt. Fidel Azula, a former submarine captain and member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said even the Colombian Navy lacked the knowledge to build such a vessel. "This is unmistakably of superb naval construction," he said.

Mr. Arreguin said that seized documents, including blueprints, contained Russian- and American-sounding names. There were indications that Russian engineers were involved, including "a very professional engineer who has constructed submarines before," he said.

The Russian mob has become increasingly involved in cocaine trafficking to Europe, Mr. Arreguin said.

Scattered about the warehouse were welding tools, propane tanks, hard hats, toolboxes and kneepads, and a Grainger Tools catalogue from the United States. A no-smoking sign and calendars featuring bikini-clad models hung on the walls.

Previously, smugglers have outfitted passenger planes and ships to transport drugs, and even built some tiny fiberglass submersibles to ferry drugs to mother ships. But they were mere contraptions compared with this submarine, which measured more than 11 feet in diameter. Officials said the traffickers could have transported the sub in three sections to the coast aboard tractor-trailers.