US MONITORS N. KOREA DRUG TRADE

WASHINGTON, Feb. 10 (UPI) - The Clinton administration is concerned enough
about the North Korean government's growing role in international narcotics
trafficking that the CIA has begun using spy satellites to monitor drug
cultivation in the cash-strapped Stalinist state, U.S. officials say.

Over the past five years, U.S. intelligence and law enforcement authorities
say North Koreans with ties to the government in Pyongyang have been
arrested for, or are involved with, drug-smuggling cases in 16 countries.

For example, last summer, Egyptian customs agents found more than 500, 000
tablets of Rohypnol, a tranquilizer known as the ``date-rape drug,'' when
they searched the luggage of two North Korean diplomats at the airport in
Cairo. And Russian officials in the far east regions of the vast nation
recently uncovered a heroin-smuggling operation when they arrested two North
Korean state security agents attempting to sell 18 pounds of heroin as a
first installment on a deal for more than 3 tons of the illegal drug.

The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, cite scores of similar
incidents involving North Korean diplomats or security agents trading in
illicit narcotics.

``Because of continuing reports North Korea may be producing large
quantities of opium for the illicit market and may be involved in
methamphetamine production and trafficking, we need to monitor the situation
closely to determine whether a substantial amount of opium is being
cultivated or harvested in North Korea, and whether opium transiting North
Korea is significantly affecting the United States,'' State Department
spokesman James Rubin said.

Rubin declined to go into detail about the evidence against North Korea or
explain exactly how the United States plans to monitor drug cultivation in
what is arguably the world's most isolated and secretive nation. He said,
however, that the Clinton administration would consider further economic
sanctions against Pyongyang if it can be proved that more than 30,000 acres
of land are being used to cultivate illegal drugs.

A nation that meets that threshold for drug crops is considered a ``major
drug-producing country,'' which automatically requires the president to rule
every March whether economic sanctions should be imposed.

Such sanctions would be largely moot, however, since the United States
maintains an economic embargo on North Korea as a result of its alleged
support for international terrorism, its export of ballistic missiles and
its state of war with South Korea.

U.S. intelligence officials says reconnaissance satellites have been
``tasked'' several times over the past two months to photograph the North
Korean countryside in an attempt to determine whether 30,000 acres are under
cultivation for crops used to produce heroin and other narcotics.

Analysis of the images is still under way, American intelligence and federal
law enforcement officials say, but initial estimates show that some 17,000
acres currently produce more than 40 tons of opium annually.