SHARP RISE IN BORDER DRUG SEIZURES WORRIES U.S.

MEXICO CITY -- Cocaine and marijuana seizures inside the southwestern
U.S. border and along Mexico's Pacific coast have escalated
dramatically in the past two years, alarming U.S. law enforcement
authorities who say Mexican traffickers are sending greater quantities
and larger loads of drugs into the United States.

Seizures of marijuana by U.S. agencies along the southwestern U.S.
border, where 70 percent of all illicit drugs enter the country, are
up as much as 33 percent over last year, according to U.S. drug
interdiction agencies.

From 1991 to 1998, seizures have jumped from 113 tons to 720 tons.
At the same time, cocaine loads off Mexico's Pacific coast appear to
have increased dramatically, and this year the U.S. Coast Guard made
the largest cocaine hauls in its history in both the Pacific Ocean and
the Caribbean.

The heavier flow of drugs has exacerbated ongoing problems of trust
and cooperation between American and Mexican authorities and is
particularly troubling to U.S. law enforcement agencies in light of
new statistics showing rising marijuana use among American teenagers.

The rising amount of seizures reflects not only greater smuggling
activity but also dramatic increases in drug production in Colombia
and Mexico, according to U.S. officials and reports from law
enforcement agencies. U.S. authorities estimate they capture 10
percent to 15 percent of all drugs smuggled into the country. While
many officials credit improved coordination among U.S. law enforcement
agencies for the increase in seizures, they say the trend clearly
indicates more drugs are arriving in the United States.

The year's mounting tally of drug seizures, along with new U.S.
calculations of significantly increased cocaine production in Colombia
and expanding opium poppy and marijuana production in Mexico, are
sending ``shock waves through the system,'' said a senior U.S.
official involved in monitoring drug trafficking.

Mexican authorities dispute some of the U.S. conclusions but said they
would not compile Mexican seizure totals until next month and declined
repeated requests to discuss this year's trends until their figures
are made public. Earlier this year, Mexico's top anti-drug official,
Mariano Herran Salvatti, said he believed that cocaine shipments into
Mexico had dropped 50 percent this year, but he did not provide
detailed supporting data.

Eradication difficult

Herran said in a news conference over the summer that marijuana and
poppy yields were up in Mexico because eradication was becoming
increasingly difficult, noting that ``the illicit plantations are
turning ever more away from populated areas and into federal lands in
the mountains.''

Mexican drug cartels appear to be reorganizing their operations to
improve the transport of South American cocaine and Mexican marijuana
and heroin to the United States at a time when many Mexican
anti-narcotics units are in serious disarray and have made little
progress in targeting the country's biggest cartel leaders, according
to U.S. law enforcement agencies.

``The drug groups are flexible and innovative and are using ever more
sophisticated and well-organized counter-surveillance and
counterintelligence,'' according to a new U.S. government intelligence
assessment. ``They are constantly . . . identifying and exploiting law
enforcement predictability, patterns, weaknesses, vulnerabilities and
routines.''

While politicians at the highest levels of both countries' capitals
continue to say that cooperation has improved, Richard A. Fiano, chief of
operations for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, told a
congressional subcommittee in September: ``Until such time that adequate
anti-corruption assurances and safeguards can be implemented,
DEA will exercise extreme caution in sharing sensitive information with our
Mexican counterparts.''

Fiano described the ``investigative achievements'' of Mexico's most
elite anti-drug units against major cartels as ``minimal.'' A special
fugitive apprehension team created by Mexico's anti-narcotics agency
to track down the leaders of the Tijuana-based Arellano-Felix cartel,
one of Mexico's two largest drug mafias, ``has not participated in any
significant enforcement activity,'' Fiano said.

Fighting corruption

Even Mexican political leaders this year became so frustrated with
failed attempts to clean up the country's corrupt law enforcement
agencies that they created a new national police force for fighting
drug trafficking and other crime. Top political leaders also pledged a
multimillion-dollar increase in support to the military and existing
civilian agencies for counter-narcotics efforts.

The surge in Mexican marijuana loads comes in the face of new U.S.
government statistics showing that marijuana use among American youths
between the ages of 12 and 17 has doubled in the past six years. In
the first nine months of 1999, marijuana seizures nationwide were up
29 percent, from 513 tons during the same period last year to 663 tons
this year.

Although those figures include domestically produced marijuana, the
seizure figures for Mexican marijuana are up by even more staggering
amounts. Borderwide seizures are up about 33 percent, and in
southeastern Texas -- which has become the hottest transit zone on the
international boundary in recent months -- marijuana seizures were up
nearly 70 percent over last year, according to law enforcement agencies.