DRUG TRAFFICKERS THRIVING ON GLOBALISATION

PARIS, (AFP) - Drugs traffickers are thriving on economic globalisation
which makes money-laundering increasingly easy, the Paris-based Geopolitical
Drugs Watch (GDW) said in a 1998-1999 report published Thursday.

"Around 350 to 400 billion dollars of drugs money was reintegrated into the
global economy over the last year," according to the report, which said the
staggering figures were a result of opening financial borders and increased
privatisation.

Laundering is rife in Africa, where bartering is a way of life and people
swap goods for money bypassing banks, according to the report.

But orgainised drugs networks in northern countries, including the Russian
mafia, are also using banks in the south as off-shore tax-havens to 'clean'
their drugs money, the report says:

"Criminal organisations, in particular the Russian mafia, are using the
Pacific islands of Marshall, Niue, Samoa and above all Vanuatu for
money-laundering paradise."

The GDW, subsidised by the European Union and the French government, uses a
200-strong global network of journalists, researchers and aid agency workers
to produce its annual report on the state of the world's drug trafficking
industry.

Drugs barons, north and south, invest their illegal profits in traditional
southern markets from gold and diamonds to cocoa and coffee, drawing in
drawing in governments and officials but crippling local populations.

GDW accuses the EU of failing to tackle drugs networks in countries like
Turkey, Burma and Morocco, because of prevailing geostrategic interests.

What is more, the EU's new legislation on chocolate quality, allowing
chocolate to contain up to 30 percent of vegetable fat as well as cocoa, is
likely to push big cocoa producing countries like the Ivory Coast, Ghana and
Nigeria into the cannabis trade, the report says.

Drug production is on the increase in traditional countries like Afghanistan
(opium), Colombia (cocaine), Morocco (cannabis), the Netherlands and Burma
(synthetic drugs) and spreading into new areas including southern Africa,
Congo and Kenya.

Rather than benefitting local populations, the increasing amounts of
laundered drugs money are benefitting an elite and contributing to increased
poverty and conflict over the last 15 years in southern countries, GDW.

The GDW report lists around 30 conflicts around the world where drugs are
involved: Basque armed separatist group ETA is listed along with old-timers
Afghanistan, Colombia and Angola.

ETA -- which has an annual budget of between 15 and 20 billion dollars
according to GDW' estimates -- has been boosting its coffers by drug dealing
since the early 1980s when arms and drugs trading became inextricably
linked, the report says.

"One day, you're told: I will sell you 50 Brownings (guns), but you have to
buy a kilo of heroin. It's a big ethical problem. But there are people who
depend on you who are waiting, because they've got a war to fight," said an
ETA member, quoted in the report.

Haschich and synthetic drug use is now nearly twice as high in the Basque
country as in the rest of Spain, according to the report which alleges
Spanish security forces are also trafficking drugs to fund their anti-ETA
operation.

The Spanish police are dealing with the same traffickers as ETA, which helps
them gather valuable information about the separatist group, GDW adds.