HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES TARNISH PERU'S ACCOMPLISHMENTS

LIMA, (June 8) IPS - Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori can boast of his
government's accomplishments at the special U.N. General Assembly session on
the problem of drugs which opened today in New York. But according to
critics, that success has come at a high price for human rights.

In the past five years, the area used for coca in Peru has been slashed by
more than 65 percent -- a victory attributed mainly to effective air
surveillance against trafficking of cocaine paste from Peru's jungles.

The government has also made inroads against the illegal flow of chemical
precursors from the coast to the tropical valleys of eastern Peru, where
coca is grown and processed into basic cocaine paste. Last year, the police
seized 268 tons of 18 chemicals used to produce basic cocaine paste,
smuggled in small loads to the jungle by road.

"Producing coca in the Peruvian jungle is not the good business it was a few
years ago," said Raul Serrano, with the non-governmental anti-drug
organization Cedro. "The prices of coca leaves and basic paste have fallen,
because the repression makes smuggling the drugs to Colombia more expensive
and more difficult."

The expert added that "Although the government budget falls short, the
situation is favorable to programs for replacing coca with profitable
alternative crops."

But Fujimori has faced heavy criticism for Peru's poor human rights record,
which critics link to excesses in drug enforcement efforts.

The New York-based Lindesmith Center says international drug enforcement aid
reinforces abusive police and military forces in the Andean region and
Mexico. "International drug enforcement policies stimulate armies to meddle
in law enforcement and undermine Latin America's efforts to promote human
rights, democracy and regional security," says a report by the research center.

"In the name of the war on drugs in Peru and Colombia, the United States and
other governments provide assistance to the military and intelligence
services considered the worst human rights violators in the hemisphere," the
report adds.

Fujimori is one of the 14 Latin American presidents attending this week's
three day drug summit in New York, along with U.S. President Bill Clinton
and heads of state and government from all over the world.

The controversy over the supposed link between international anti-drug
assistance and Peru's intelligence services -- caught up in an on-going
scandal -- blew up after a late April visit to Lima by Barry McCaffrey, the
director of the White House Office on National Drug Control Policy.

On his return to Washington, McCaffrey felt obliged to call a press
conference to express the discomfort he felt due to the presence of
Vladimiro Montesinos, the controversial head of Peru's National Intelligence
Service, in meetings he attended.

But McCaffrey congratulated the Fujimori administration for its victories
against the drug trade -- a tacit comparison to the meager results achieved
in Bolivia, Colombia and Mexico.

Due to the success of Peru's crackdown on the production of basic cocaine
paste, the international drug supply pattern has shifted. Peru and Bolivia
were once "source' countries -- producers of basic cocaine paste -- while
Mexico and Colombia were merely "bridges" over which drugs flowed to the
United States and Europe.

Drug enforcement efforts in the rest of the region's producer countries have
clearly not met with the same success as in Peru, because the offer of
cocaine on the world market has increased and coca production has risen 12
percent in spite of the drop in Peru.

Especially serious is the situation in Colombia, which in spite of some $1
billion in aid from Washington has seen a 260 percent rise in production of
drugs over the past decade.

Surveillance of Peru's air space to detect and intercept the small airplanes
used by traffickers to carry one or two tons of basic cocaine paste per
flight forced the cartels to seek new routes. The new target of anti-drug
efforts, Montesinos told McCaffrey, is river transport.

But trafficking drugs by river is slower and riskier and thus more expensive
than small airplanes, and only small quantities can be smuggled, taking
advantage of public transport systems.

A source from Peru's anti-drug office reported that 11 U.S. Coast Guard and
Marine instructors were training Peruvian navy and police personnel in the
Santa Clotilde base on the Amazon river to optimize mechanisms of river
interdiction.

Checked-by: Melodi Cornett