THE DRUG CERTIFICATION DANCE

Fighting drugs when politically expedient

An annual spring rite takes place today in Washington -- a familiar
pantomime in which the White House pretends to evaluate the
cooperation of drug-producing countries with U.S. agencies in the
fight against drugs.

It will come as a surprise to no one that the process in reality is a
completely political one that has but the most passing relationship
with actual drug production and crime-fighting.

Naturally target countries find the process distasteful, patronizing
and hurtful, as their ambassadors and foreign ministers will tell you
before you even ask. And at the State Department, there's fear of
offending important neighbors and allies.

Accordingly, the countries responsible for the production and transfer
of the vast majority of drugs entering the United States usually end
up being certified for their cooperation, Colombia and Mexico
specifically. The two are expected to get the stamp of approval again
this year, even though Colombia accounts for 80 percent of cocaine
reaching the United States. Mexico is the conduit for 75 percent of
the white stuff moving across U.S. borders.

Meanwhile, less important countries are sent to the corner for
time-out, with the ignominious label "decertified" stuck on their backs.

Last year's offenders, according to State, included Haiti, Paraguay,
Burma, Cambodia, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Nigeria.

This year, the administration's certification dance provoked a letter
of outrage from the chairmen of the international relations committees
in the Senate and the House, Sen. Jesse Helms and Rep. Ben Gilman. In
the letter, dated Feb. 24 and addressed to Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright, Messrs. Gilman and Helms write, "The State
Department's assessment of Mexico's anti-drug performance is simply
not objective.

U.S. diplomats are resigned to writing annual assessments to put
Mexico's unsatisfactory cooperation in the best possible light.

Our nation is ill-served when the bureaucracy feels obliged to help
the President paint an inaccurate picture of a matter so important as
Mexico's cooperation in the fight against drugs."

The letter echoes the findings of Roger Noriega, a professional staff
member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who on return from a
December trip to Mexico wrote in a staff report, "One U.S. official in
Mexico City remarked that the task is to gather all the facts and
present them in a way that does not sound as bad as they are."

At a press conference on Friday, held on his return from a three-day
visit to Colombia, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, director of the Office of
National Drug Policy, made no secret of his dislike for the
certification process, which is congressionally mandated to exert
pressure on drug-exporting countries. Though he was to send his
recommendation for Colombian certification to the State Department
that day, Mr. McCaffrey also said, "I don't pay much attention to it,
but it's the U.S. law. We've had 34 binational confrontations over it.
What we need instead is multinational cooperation."

There is no doubt that Colombia has a problem and that it is also our
problem. A civil war is tearing the country apart, conducted by
narco-guerrillas, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC),
which are handsomely funded by the proceeds of the drug trade and are
said to control one-third of the country.

Astonishingly, representatives of the FARC were received with open
arms and honors in Europe two weeks ago, traveling to Sweden, Norway,
Spain and the Vatican (no meeting with the pope, though). Meanwhile,
back in Colombia, the escalating level of violence caused by these
people is appalling.

Organized crime, guerrillas and paramilitaries are all fighting with
one another, and the Colombian police and army are struggling to gain
control, sometimes using none too refined methods, either.

Millions of Colombians have fled to the United States and Canada,
while an estimated three quarters of a million are internally
displaced, according to Mr. McCaffrey. While production of cocaine is
down in Bolivia and Peru, it keeps going up in Colombia.

The Clinton administration has only recently gotten behind aid to
Colombia to fight the drug lords.

One senses the prospect of an election coming up, and a dismal record
in the fight against drugs being part of the Clinton-Gore record.

Let's not forget that this administration's first act of government
reinvention (Vice President Gore's pet project) was to reduce the
staff of the office of the drug czar from 60 to 25, 10 of which were
political appointees. To the new crowd in the White House, drug use
was no problem.

The fact is that the Colombian government has pleaded for years for
help in the form of U.S. helicopters to fight the cocaine producers in
jungles of Colombia's south where the terrain is utterly impenetrable
by land. Mr. McCaffrey says the Colombians will finally get them, and
a total of $1.6 billion in aid to Colombia has been proposed by the
White House. Right now, we have 200 military advisers in the country,
prompting members of Congress to question whether we are in for
another Vietnam-style quagmire.

Vietnam, however, was on the other side of the world.

Colombia is three hours' flight from here, and the repercussions in
the United States of what happens there are clearly felt. The American
end of the problem is this: We have 5 million drug users, and not by
any means all of them in the inner city. Three million Americans use
cocaine.

In fact, Americans consume one-quarter of all the cocaine produced in
the world.

The case of New York Yankees player Daryl Strawberry, who this week
was suspended for one year for a third drug infraction, is just one
highly visible example of a talent and career continuously messed up
by cocaine addiction.

That the Clinton administration has failed to attack the problem head
on so far will be part of the Clinton-Gore record.

As for Congress, it needs to keep up the pressure, and not stand in
the way when the White House finally seems ready to act.