CHILE, ARGENTINA PART OF DRUG CARTELS' NEW STRATEGY

9.7-Ton Cocaine Seizure Signals Colombia Cartels' Diversion Tactics

ARICA, Chile - Authorities are basking in the glow of success this week
after scoring the third-biggest cocaine bust in the world, but the
implications of the 9.7-ton capture are now beginning to sink in.

U.S. and Latin American anti-drug officials say Chile and its neighbor
Argentina have become the target of a new strategy by Colombian traffickers
to smuggle drugs into the United States and Europe.

Officials in the region have been aware of the trend for more than a year,
but they say that Sunday's seizure in the northern port city of Arica has
driven home the dimensions of the problem.

"A capture of this magnitude is very surprising," said Arica's acting
customs administrator, Mario Arameda. After receiving a U.S. intelligence
tip that led to the seizure, "we knew it would be a big shipment, but 'big'
to us is maybe 500 kilos [1,100 pounds]. Nine tons of cocaine is gigantic."

As demonstrated by Sunday's bust, drug-trafficking organizations are sending
large shipments to South America's economically bustling - and largely
drug-free - Southern Cone region as a new way of evading detection and
capture, U.S. officials say.

The diversion strategy means the United States could have to establish a
much broader and more expensive narcotics-intervention capability than the
one that has focused primarily on blocking northbound smuggling routes
through the Caribbean and Central America.

It also means that nations such as Chile and Argentina could become
increasingly vulnerable to the drug corruption already in evidence across
Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.

The most recent example of the new trafficking strategy is the cargo ship
Nativa, a Colombian-owned vessel that U.S. intelligence satellites
reportedly followed closely after it left Turkey on Nov. 11, passed through
the Panama Canal in December and then called at Corinto, Nicaragua. The
ship, carrying a cargo of steel rods, then turned south, only to make a
curious stop alongside an unidentified vessel in the Pacific Ocean off
Ecuador before heading to Arica.

Chilean naval Cmdr. Michael Manley said he ordered the ship detained in
Arica on Saturday after noticing numerous safety violations on board,
irregularities on the ship's manifest and an unusual mixture of crew members
from Colombia, Russia, Ukraine, Germany, Venezuela and Peru.

Within hours, Chilean authorities received information from U.S.
intelligence sources that a large shipment of drugs could be aboard the
Nativa. A thorough search of the ship and interrogation of its 20 crew
members yielded nothing, Cmdr. Manley said. Seven drug-sniffing dogs scoured
the ship but also failed to detect any illicit cargo.

On a hunch, a welder cut through a 2-inch-thick steel cargo-hoist mast.
Inside the 8-foot-diameter hollow mast, investigators discovered the cocaine
wrapped in hundreds of pillow-sized plastic packets.

The street value of the cargo is estimated at $600 million to $900 million.
The only two seizures of larger amounts on record were a 12-ton cocaine bust
in San Diego in 1995 and a 10-ton seizure in the Canary Islands last year.

The Kolpin, another cargo ship owned by Punta Arenas Corp., the Colombian
company that owns the Nativa, was detained Monday in the port of Valparaiso,
Chile. Marcelo Albarran, spokesman for Chile's maritime authority, said
customs agents, police and military personnel combed the ship for drugs but
found nothing.

Cmdr. Manley, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Md., said
he believes a possible strategy of traffickers is to send large shipments
south in hopes of sneaking the illicit cargo past Chilean inspectors, who
have an international reputation for being rigorous.

With a Chilean inspection stamp, he said, shippers "have a sort of passport"
that makes them less vulnerable to searches in the United States and Europe.

A U.S. law-enforcement official, who asked not to be identified, said it is
exactly the clean reputation of countries like Chile and Argentina that are
making them more attractive as transit points for drugs.

A cargo container carrying an Argentine certificate of origin, he said, is
far less likely to be inspected on arrival in the United States than would a
similar container shipped from Colombia or Peru.

Human smugglers, known as "mules," who try to hide drugs in personal
articles or swallow large quantities packed into condoms, are less likely to
be stopped in Miami if they arrive on a flight from Buenos Aires instead of
Bogota, he added.

As an initial step in foiling such a strategy, the official said, the U.S.
Drug Enforcement Administration last year began training an elite Argentine
unit, known as the Northern Border Task Force, whose job is to intercept
large shipments of drugs heading south from Colombia and Peru by way of
southern Brazil and Paraguay.

A 1999 State Department report also identified Chile and Argentina as
increasingly popular transit points because of their bustling commerce with
the United States and Europe and because of their nearness to drug-producing
countries.

Arica, for example, is only a few hours' drive from the borders of Peru and
Bolivia, the two top coca-producing nations in the world behind Colombia.

"The length and ruggedness of Chile's mountainous eastern border, its 3,928
miles of coastline, and the extensive commerce in fruit, wine, frozen
seafood, and minerals through more than 10 deep-sea ports make Chile an
attractive location for transshipment of narcotics to the U.S., Europe, and
Asia," the report said.

Argentina's Mercosur trade pact with Brazil and Uruguay makes it
particularly vulnerable to illicit drug shipments, the report added.

"As a member of Mercosur, Argentina cannot open and inspect containers
sealed in another member state which are passing through the country in
transit. These sealed and uninspected containers are considered to be a high
trafficking threat," the report said.

As far back as 1997, Colombia's hard-charging former drug prosecutor,
Alfonso Valdivieso, warned during a stop in Chile that "the symptoms here
are very dangerous." The use of Chile as a transit point, he said, "means
there are Chileans joining the criminal organizations."

Until this week, perhaps the biggest scare Chile has had regarding
drug-trafficking activity was the revelation in 1997 that Mexico's biggest
cocaine trafficker, Amado Carrillo Fuentes, had been planning a large-scale
move into Chile. The plan was exposed and several arrests were made after
Mr. Carrillo, head of the Juarez cartel, died during plastic surgery in July
1997.

Rene Lobos, chief of counternarcotics operations at Chilean customs in
Arica, insisted that his nation should not be regarded as a "country at
risk." But he added that trafficking organizations are using "an
increasingly sophisticated methodology" to ensure that their cargo reaches
its intended destination, and that the attempt with the Nativa could be just
one of the ways they are testing the waters.