DESPITE LIMITED RESOURCES, CUBANS BATTLE DRUG TRAFFICKERS

CAYO CONFITES, Cuba -- On this sandy speck of land off the northern
coast of Cuba, the line of defense against Colombian drug traffickers
bound for the United States consists of an aging Soviet-era patrol
boat, a British radar system with a six-mile range and 15 Cuban soldiers.

"We are seeing a systematic increase in the amount of drugs dropped by
air, then picked up by fast boats and taken out of our waters," said
Col. Fredy Curbelo, an Interior Ministry official who accompanied an
American reporter on a tour of counter-drug installations in Cuba.

"Our Soviet launches are 20 years old and can go 27 knots, while the
drug traffickers can easily go at 45 knots. We are doing what we can
with our resources, but we are limited in what we can do."

Despite Cuba's dire economic problems, the government of President
Fidel Castro is mounting what counter-drug experts in Europe and the
United States say is a serious effort to block the flow of illegal
drugs through Cuba.

Castro's program has so impressed U.S. law enforcement officials that
they would like to cooperate further with their Cuban counterparts.
There's one problem: Some members of Congress, with backing from many
Cuban Americans, are dead set against any cooperation between Havana
and Washington.

Cuba is an ideal transshipment point for illegal drugs bound for the
United States, according to U.S. officials, who estimate that 30
percent of the cocaine reaching the United States from Colombia passes
through the Caribbean. Yet for now, counter-drug cooperation is
limited to information exchanged on a case-by-case basis between the
U.S. Coast Guard and Cuba's border guards via fax or an antiquated
telex system.

Meanwhile, counter-drug cooperation is growing between Cuba and U.S.
allies like Britain, Colombia, France and Spain. Cuban officials said
they would welcome increased cooperation with the United States in
fighting drug traffickers even in the absence of any progress toward
lifting the U.S. economic embargo against the island.

Barry McCaffrey, the Clinton administration's director of national
drug control policy, said recently that the United States "probably
ought to be willing to encourage" dialogue with Cuban authorities on
counter-drug cooperation. But McCaffrey has been under attack from
Cuban-American lawmakers and their allies in Congress, who have long
contended that Castro's government is not fighting drug smugglers but
assisting them.

Three Republican members of the House -- Florida's Lincoln Diaz-Balart
and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, and Indiana's Dan Burton -- demanded in a
Dec. 30, 1998, letter that McCaffrey address "the issue of the Cuban
government's participation in narcotrafficking and take all necessary
actions to end the Clinton administration's coverup of that reality."

In an angry response Jan. 28, McCaffrey, a retired army general, said
he was insulted by the tone of the letter, "categorically" denied a
coverup and said there was "no conclusive evidence to indicate that
Cuban leadership is currently involved in this criminal activity."

Despite McCaffrey's comments and pleas from the Justice Department,
the DEA and the Coast Guard, there are no plans to improve the level
of counter-drug cooperation between the two countries, Clinton
administration officials said.