HAITI IS KEY CARIBBEAN DRUG ROUTE-U.S. OFFICIAL

MIAMI, Feb 11 (Reuters) - South American drug traffickers are using Haiti as
a main smuggling route through the Caribbean but the region lags far behind
Pacific-Mexico routes for U.S.-bound drugs, U.S. anti-drugs chief Barry
McCaffrey said on Thursday.

Although Caribbean smuggling routes are a "huge problem," 50-70 percent of
illicit drug traffic to the United States flows up the eastern Pacific or
across the 2,000-mile (3,200 km) Mexico border, McCaffrey told academics at
the University of Miami's North-South Centre.

The island of Hispaniola, shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic, is the
key route through the Caribbean and little progress has been made toward
stemming the flow, said McCaffrey, director of the Office of National Drug
Control Policy.

"Clearly Haiti is viewed as enormously vulnerable, almost open, to being
used as a drug smuggling conduit into the United States and into the
Dominican Republic, and that's what's happening," he said. "I see no
credible effort so far to oppose that process."

McCaffrey said the United States needed to continue long-term support for
the anti-drugs fight in Colombia, where land under coca plant cultivation
"exploded" by 26 percent last year, and Mexico, where U.S. officials have
defended the government's efforts against traffickers. Coca plants provide
the raw material for cocaine.

The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that Mexico had produced such
dismal results against drug trafficking in the last year that Congress would
try to add it to a blacklist of countries unworthy of aid.

President Bill Clinton has requested a record $17.8 billion budget for the
drug war in 2000, an increase of $735 million over 1999.

McCaffrey said some South American drug traffic was moving through Cuban
airspace and sea lanes, but reiterated past statements that the United
States had no evidence the Cuban government was involved in smuggling.

However, he said Cuba was potentially a major smuggling threat to the United
States.

"Cuba will be open within five years and it will be a major, logical drug
smuggling route to Europe and the United States," he said.