PACIFIC BECOMING LUCRATIVE DRUG ROUTE TO U.S.

Seizures of South American cocaine bound for the United States via the
Pacific Ocean have more than doubled in the last year, and U.S. narcotics
authorities say its wide-open seas have replaced the congested Caribbean as
the drug cartels' most lucrative trafficking route.

The increased seizures are a result of a major redeployment of the U.S.
Coast Guard's Pacific Coast forces away from more traditional missions of
fisheries enforcement and of support of military exercises that counter
drug-trafficking activities, senior officials say.

"More than half of the cocaine that leaves South America is now coming up
the Pacific side," said Rear Adm. Terry Cross, the Coast Guard's chief of
operations. "The drug smugglers are using the Pacific like any business;
they're picking the least risky and least costly for them."

U.S. law enforcement authorities said the expanding use of the eastern
Pacific as a major drug-trafficking route is particularly troubling because
the open ocean is so difficult to patrol and because most of the drug
shipments are put ashore in Mexico, where law enforcement has been
traditionally lax and drug mafias have exerted growing control over police
and public officials in the past decade.

"In the short term, we anticipate continued heavy flow through the eastern
Pacific," said Vice Adm. Ernest Riutta, the Coast Guard commander for the
Pacific area. "There's a limit to how much I can throw out there, and they
(the traffickers) have unlimited resources."

While much of the cocaine in the Caribbean is moved in open speed boats
easily identifiable by their oversized engines and extra fuel containers,
most cocaine traverses the Pacific in the hulls of fishing boats or aboard
massive container ships that are virtually impossible to search, law
enforcement authorities and analysts say.

"They bring the drugs in cargo ships, and it never hits the intelligence
radar screen," said Stephen Flynn, a fellow at the Council on Foreign
Relations who is researching a book on the effect of globalization on the
smuggling of drugs, illegal immigrants and arms. "And law enforcement is
always slow to react to trends."

U.S. authorities began detecting an increased use of the eastern Pacific as
a drug-trafficking route nearly five years ago but have dedicated
relatively few resources to tackling the area because of financial
constraints and jurisdictional bickering among U.S. law enforcement
agencies and between the United States and Latin American countries.

However, in the past year, U.S. agencies including the Coast Guard, Drug
Enforcement Administration and U.S. Customs, have begun sharing
intelligence information and coordinating operations more efficiently,
senior law enforcement authorities and Coast Guard officials say.

"Significant increases occurred in interpretability and info-sharing with
U.S. military and national intelligence agencies," Coast Guard spokesman
Cmdr. Jim McPherson said.

In addition, while U.S. officials said they continue to have conflicts with
Mexico's anti-drug agencies, the Mexican navy has become increasingly
cooperative in coordinating drug operations with the Coast Guard in the
Pacific.

The Coast Guard has dedicated increasing numbers of cutters to drug
interdictions, and in the first 10 months of this fiscal year, it has
exceeded last year's record cocaine hauls with seizures totaling more than
58 tons and worth an estimated $3.9 billion, according to Coast Guard
documents. During the entire previous fiscal year, the agency captured 55
tons in what had been its highest seizure rate in history.

"Eighty percent of the cocaine we've interdicted is in the eastern Pacific,
compared to 38 percent last year," Cross said.

In a typical seizure in July, the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Chase stopped a
Colombian fishing vessel about 900 miles north of Colombia based on
intelligence reports of suspected drug trafficking. After hours of
searching, a Coast Guard team discovered half a ton of cocaine bricks
frozen amid crushed ice and rotting sharks in the holds of the 60-foot boat.