U.N. TO CREATE OWN SATELLITE PROGRAM TO FIND ILLEGAL DRUG CROPS

The United Nations program charged with reducing illicit drugs is
creating its own satellite monitoring system to identify the
cultivation of narcotics in the major source countries.

The U.N. International Drug Control Program received the go-ahead last
week at the annual meeting in Vienna of the world body's Commission on
Narcotic Drugs, getting unanimous approval from the 53 member
countries, including the United States.

Acquiring a satellite capability is important for the program because
a more accurate assessment of the illicit drugs being cultivated would
provide a universally accepted benchmark against which countries'
promises to reduce drug production could be measured. The targets were
set at a special session of the General Assembly last June.

More intensive satellite surveillance would also expose the so-called
balloon effect in which illicit crops reduced or eradicated in one
region or country tend to shift to another.

Pino Arlacchi, the executive director of the drug control program,
said that the European Space Agency will provide the satellites and
technical expertise to monitor the drug crops for member countries,
and the European Commission has agreed to pay some of the costs.

He estimated that the satellite monitoring could cost as little as $15
million a year, and would start in about a year.

"For the first time the international community will have a very
reliable instrument to measure the extent of illegal crops," Arlacchi
said in a telephone interview from Vienna. The program will confirm
its satellite findings with more detailed surveys on the ground and
with aerial photographs by conventional aircraft, Arlacchi said.

He has set a goal of eliminating drug cultivation in 10 years through
a combination of eradication and development programs inducing farmers
to switch to less lucrative but legal crops.

Until now, the United States provided satellite information gathered
by the Central Intelligence Agency, Arlacchi said. But the CIA's
overflights did not focus specifically on coca and opium cultivation
and the spy agency also did not share its remote sensing methodology
to explain its findings.

The CIA's conclusions have opened it to charges of political bias from
some drug-producing countries. For example, the Colombian government
said that it eradicated 123,500 acres of coca last year, mostly by
aerial spraying. The CIA reported that only 14,000 acres were
eradicated, prompting protests from the Colombians, Arlacchi said.

When the Commission on Narcotic Drugs met last week, Colombia asked
the counter-drug program to help provide governments with tools to
monitor illicit drug-growing.

Because the United Nations is generally viewed as impartial, its
satellite monitoring could end such controversies by creating a
surveillance system with a uniform methodology accepted by member countries.

The United Nations counter-drug program has enjoyed better access to
drug-growing regions than the United States and other countries trying
to stop narcotics at their source. But coming up with an accurate
count is difficult in regions that are remote or ravaged by warfare.

The satellite monitoring for the United Nations will concentrate on
five countries that produce more than 90 percent of the raw
ingredients used to manufacture heroin and cocaine. They are Myanmar
(formerly called Burma) and Afghanistan, the foremost sources of
opium, and Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, which grow almost all of the
coca leaf.