BRAZIL, PERU TO RENEW ANTI-DRUG COOPERATION

BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) -- Brazil and Peru are renewing an agreement to fight
drug trafficking along their remote Amazon jungle border, Brazil's top drug
official said Friday.

The agreement, to be signed Monday in the Peruvian capital of Lima, updates
a 1976 accord for repression and prevention of trafficking, Antidrug
Secretary Walter Maierovitch said.

Peru's program to substitute the cultivation of coca, the plant used to make
cocaine, had pushed traffickers toward the border, he said.

According to Barry McCaffrey, head of the White House's anti-drug policy,
the program has led to a 56 percent reduction of cocaine production in Peru
and a 22 percent decline in Bolivia.

McCaffrey visited Brazil in August and discussed increasing border controls
to prevent traffickers from setting up bases inside Brazil, which has become
a key route for cocaine shipments to markets in North America and Europe.

Maierovitch said that Brazilian intelligence found that three Peruvian drug
groups -- Cacique Rivera, the Cristal cartel and the Tio RDios cartel --
were already operating along the frontier.