COLOMBIA COCA CULTIVATION HAS SKYROCKETED, U.S. DRUG CZAR SAYS

But Peru, Bolivia have helped curb cocaine production, U.S. drug czar says

While world drug production is declining, new CIA crop estimates show a
phenomenal increase of coca cultivation in Colombia, White House drug czar
Barry McCaffrey announced Thursday.

Coca production rose 26 percent in Colombia last year, McCaffrey said.

"This is a massive, strategic shift of cocaine production out of Bolivia
and Peru, and into Colombia," he said. Surveying drug trafficking
throughout the hemisphere, McCaffrey said he does not believe the Cuban
government is involved in drug smuggling, but he speculated that Cuba may
become a major drug transit point in a post-Fidel Castro era.

Addressing a group of academics and diplomats at the University of Miami,
the head of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy said
efforts to curb drug production overseas have paid off, thanks to the
anti-cocaine drive by the Peruvian and Bolivian governments.

"Cocaine production in South America has plummeted," he said. "Between 1995
and 1998, coca cultivation has declined by 56 percent in Peru and 22
percent in Bolivia."

The problem is that Colombia's coca production "has exploded," offsetting
the successes elsewhere in the Andean region, McCaffrey said, citing
previously classified CIA crop estimates that he suggested will be made
public periodically.

The new figure is almost certain to exacerbate a debate in Congress between
conservative Republicans and the Clinton administration over how to deal
with Colombia, congressional sources and academics say.

Congressional critics of the administration are demanding a massive
increase in U.S. aid to Colombia's anti-narcotics forces and fear that
Colombian President Andres Pastrana's decision to withdraw the army from a
sizable rebel-held territory as part of his peace initiative with leftist
guerrillas will turn out to be a blessing for drug traffickers.

Asked about the newly demilitarized zones, McCaffrey said that "it is not a
major coca-producing region," although he conceded "there is clearly a
risk" that it may become one. Congressional critics say the area,
stretching from the south of Bogota to almost the Ecuadorean border,
harbors major cocaine laboratories.

But McCaffrey conceded that, while he supports Pastrana's peace plan, he is
skeptical about the guerrillas' sincerity.

In a later interview with The Herald, he added that rebels of the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia are making $600 million a year from
drug protection, kidnappings and bank robberies. "Why would they stop?" he
asked.

On drug trafficking through the Caribbean, McCaffrey identified Haiti and
the Dominican Republic as major transit routes, but said Cuba is not a
major problem yet.

U.S. intelligence services have detected drug flights carrying up to one
ton of cocaine a month over Cuban territory, "taking advantage of Cuba's
vulnerabilities. The Cubans have almost no capability right now to operate
in their own coastal waters or airspace. Their radars don't work," he said.

"We have no evidence, nor personally do I believe, that the Cuban
government itself is involved in any way in drug smuggling, nor do I
believe that it is yet a major threat to the United States," he added.

"Having said that, [I think] it will be [a threat]. You know, at some
point, we won't have an aging communist dictatorship in Cuba. They are the
most energetic people in the world. Cuba will be open within five years or
whatever, and it will be a major, a logical drug-smuggling route."

A University of Miami expert on Latin American drug trafficking, Bruce
Bagley, disputed McCaffrey's assertion that coca growers are moving to
Colombia because the governments of Peru and Bolivia are doing a good job
eradicating the crop.

"Production has dropped in Peru and Bolivia because the Colombians have
come up with a better variety of coca and because they are closer to the
United States," Bagley said.