CUBA WILLING, INEFFECTIVE, IN WAR ON DRUGS

WASHINGTON - Cuba has shown willingness to help the United States fight the
international drug trade but has been largely ineffective at it, the Clinton
administration's anti-narcotics policy-maker said Saturday.

Only a small portion of the drugs that come into the United States come
through Cuba, Barry McCaffrey said, but the island's location and a growing
tourist market could make it an opportune target for drug traffickers.

"I don't think it's a significant problem on balance yet, but as we look to
the future, my own assumption is that it will become one," McCaffrey told
The Associated Press. "It's worth being worried about."

McCaffrey, a retired Army general, said the only direct contact the United
States has had with Cuba on drug policy has been between the Coast Guard and
Cuba's coastal enforcement authority.

He cautioned that Cuba lacks the resources to counter the world's large
drug-trafficking organizations. McCaffrey said drugs are routinely flown
over Cuba or dumped in Cuban waters without effective resistance by the
President Fidel Castro's government.

But McCaffrey, whose last Army job made him the senior U.S. officer in Latin
America as chief of the Southern Command, said the Cuban government has
shown no sympathy for international drug traffickers and consistently
confronts international drug traffickers when they threaten Cuba's interests.

The United States has had no diplomatic relations with Cuba since January
1961, a year after Castro took over in 1959 and began nationalizing much of
the country's industry. McCaffrey said Castro's government remains a
roadblock to further cooperation on drug trafficking.

McCaffrey also blasted President Ernesto Perez Balladares of Panama for not
supporting a continued U.S. military role in Panama to fight drugs.
McCaffrey said Balladares and his party, the Democratic Revolutionary Party,
agreed to a U.S. force in private negotiations but campaigned against it in
elections.