CORRUPTION CLOUDS ANTI-DRUG EFFORTS

WASHINGTON--A U.S. drug enforcement official recalls the despair he felt
not long ago when he walked into a meeting with counternarcotics officials
from a Caribbean country and found two of them sporting top-of-the-line
Rolex watches. To the U.S. official, the Rolexes meant these agents were on
the take from the very people they were supposed to be pursuing.

Corruption of local officials has been one the chief obstacles the Clinton
administration has faced in its efforts to counter the growing problem of
drug trafficking in the Caribbean. An estimated 30 percent to 40 percent
of U.S.-bound narcotics that originates in South America traverses the
Caribbean.

With their numerous unpoliced islets, it's hard to imagine a more opportune
conduit for drug smuggling than the Caribbean islands, many of which are
too small and resource-poor to fend off multibillion-dollar cocaine
cartels. Some of these criminal
enterprises can use the islands' array of financial institutions to
disguise their proceeds.

U.S. officials are worried that Panama, located just north of Colombia,
will become a prime transit point for cocaine traffickers once, as
expected, Panama-based U.S.-antidrug flights are grounded when the Panama
Canal reverts to local control at the end of 1999.

Some Caribbean officials contend that ungenerous U.S. economic policies
toward the region make it ripe for illicit activities to flourish. Because
of the North American Free Trade Agreement, Mexico has easier access to
U.S. markets than Caribbean countries do, and as a result, thousands of
jobs have migrated to Mexico from Jamaica and other countries. U.S.
actions in the World Trade Organization also mean vulnerable eastern
Caribbean banana growing countries will lose their preferential access to
European markets.

Jamaican Ambassador Richard Bernal believes narcotrafficers could actually
seize control of an entire island in the area, citing the 1979 takeover of
Grenada by 40 determined leftists. U.S. officials say narcotraffickers need
only take control of an island's infrastructure to meet their needs, not
the whole island.

But these officials believe recent advances in U.S.-Caribbean cooperation
on the counternarcotics front offer cause for optimism.

The centerpiece of the U.S. strategy are maritime drug interdiction
agreements that the State Department has negotiated with 19 Caribbean
countries and dependent territories The agreements provide the authority
for U.S. vessels to engage in patrols, boardings, searches, seizures and
arrests in foreign waters. Hot pursuit of suspect vessels and aircraft
also is authorized.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said last April after meeting with 15
Caribbean foreign ministers that cooperation also is being sought to curb
money laundering. "Our goal is to construct a web of legal arrangements and
law enforcement actions that will discourage international criminals from
acting, and leaving no place to hide if they do," she said.

In all, U.S. officials believe they intercepted about one-third of the
estimated 430 tons of cocaine shipped from South America to the United
States last year.

Some Caribbean countries were reluctant to enter into the maritime
agreements, seeing them as an erosion of their sovereignty. But U.S.
officials say these concerns seem to diminish if the United States is
perceived as playing fair, is willing to offer reciprocity and provides
genuine assistance.

The foreign minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Ramesh Maraj, said the
alternative to the agreement with the United States was to let drug barons
take over his country's sovereignty.

But a number of Caribbean countries found the U.S. approach heavy-handed,
said Gillian Gunn Clissold of Georgetown University.

She noted that the Caribbean countries would have preferred to negotiate
the maritime agreements on a regionwide basis but bowed to U.S. insistence
on a bilateral approach. This made it easier for the powerful U.S. to
dictate terms to individual small states.

Clissold said these agreements were presented to the Caribbean nations on a
take-it-or-leave basis. "No effort was made to tailor each agreement to the
specific concerns of each state," she said.

Copyright Los Angeles Times

Checked-by: (Joel W. Johnson)