CUBA SEEKS U.S. HELP IN BATTLE TO CONTROL DRUG TRADE

CAYO CONFITES, Cuba -- The only line of defense here 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 here, then picked up by fast boats and taken out of our waters,"
said Col. Fredy Curbelo, an Interior Ministry official. "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."

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

Castro's program has so impressed U.S. law enforcement officials that
they would like to cooperate more with their Cuban counterparts, who
already have provided discreet assistance in several major cases.

There's just one problem: Some members of Congress, with backing from
many Cuban-Americans, are dead set against any cooperation between
Havana and Washington, which have not had diplomatic relations since
1961.

"From our point of view, the policy makes no sense," said a senior
U.S. law enforcement official. "We can't close off the Caribbean (from
drug traffic) without dealing with Cuba, and they have shown a
willingness to cooperate with us by acting on all the information we
pass on to them. It is a major hole that needs to be plugged."

Just 90 miles from Florida, Cuba is an ideal transshipment point for
illegal drugs bound for the United States, according to U.S. law
enforcement officials. They estimate that about 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.

In contrast, the counter-drug cooperation between Cuba and such U.S.
allies as Britain, Spain, Colombia and France is growing.

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.

Earlier this month, Barry McCaffrey, the administration's drug czar,
said 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.

In a Dec. 30, 1998, letter, House Republicans Lincoln Diaz- Balart of
Florida, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida and Dan Burton of Indiana all
demanded that McCaffrey address "the issue of the Cuban government's
participation in narco-trafficking and take all necessary actions to
end the Clinton administration's cover-up of that reality."

In an angry response on Jan. 28, McCaffrey, a retired army general,
said he was "insulted" by the tone of the letter. He "categorically"
denied a cover-up 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, senior Clinton
administration officials said.

They added, however, that in the absence of a formal agreement, the
two countries can continue to cooperate on a case-by-case basis, as
they have been. Anything more ambitious, they said, would generate a
political backlash in Congress and jeopardize the informal channels
between law-enforcement agencies in Cuba and the United States.