PRECEDE MEXICO CITY

HUIXTLA, Mexico (AP) U.S. drug czar Barry McCaffrey witnessed the
perseverance of drug traffickers Thursday as he inspected Mexican efforts
to guard borders against drug shipments.

A small plane disguised with military markings and loaded with a half-ton
of cocaine, flew into Mexican airspace about 30 miles from where McCaffrey
was in the city of Huixtla, near the Guatemalan border.

Federal police seized the four-seat Cessna 210 after it landed at a small
airfield. They found the cocaine and arrested the two Colombian pilots.
Police believe the plane came from Colombia.

"You see, relatively infrequently, aircraft flying out of Colombia try and
get into southern Mexico," McCaffrey said later to The Associated Press. He
added that traffickers are trying other routes in the face of what he
called "a deterrence wall against cocaine and heroin smuggling" being built
in Mexico.

"We're doing pretty well in the air," he said. "They (traffickers) are
already reading this situation, and they're landing in Guatemala, El
Salvador, or shipping by ferry and air into Panama."

Spurred by U.S. criticism of it's anti-drug efforts and concerns about
growing domestic drug use and violence Mexico is spending hundreds of
millions of dollars to install large X-ray units to detect drug shipments
at its Guatemalan border.

Mexico has also mounted a land, sea and air campaign involving about 20,000
military personnel to patrol the country's Caribbean coast and intercept
drug shipments flown in, or dropped from planes into the sea to be picked
up by waiting boats.

McCaffrey, the top U.S. anti-drug policy official, praised the program.

"In my judgment in the next five years this strategy will work in a
significant way," he said. "We've got to go look at where these people
(traffickers) are going to go next."

Earlier, McCaffrey said about 55 percent of the cocaine used in the United
States is still shipped through Mexico. He said better intelligence-sharing
on the tracking and interception of drug flights and especially drug-laden
boats is still needed.

Throughout his three-day visit to Mexico, McCaffrey has stressed that
cooperation between the two countries is key in fighting the drug trade.

"This is only the beginning," McCaffrey said. "There is a strong belief in
the hemisphere that we must work in partnership to protect our people"
against drugs.