GLOBAL PACT AIMS TO END DRUG TRADE

200 leaders to sign agreement on `every nation's problem'

NEW YORK - The first global deal aimed at killing the drug trade is
expected to be signed here tomorrow by almost 200 world leaders.

``Drugs are every nation's problem, and every nation must act to fight them
- - on the streets, around the kitchen table, and around the world,''
President Bill Clinton said yesterday.

Countries must stop squabbling over who bears more blame for drug
trafficking - so-called producer or consumer nations - and unite in a
worldwide campaign to ``turn this evil tide,'' Clinton said at the opening
of the first global drug summit.

``The stakes are high, for the drug empires erode the foundations of
democracies, corrupt the integrity of market economies, menace the lives,
the hopes, the futures of families on every continent,'' he said. ``Let
there be no doubt, this is ultimately a struggle for human freedom.''

Illegal drug consumption involves an estimated 4 per cent of the world's
population. The narcotics trade amounts to more than $400 billion (U.S.),
the U. N. estimates, twice as big as the world's auto industry.

This three-day special session of the United Nations ends tomorrow, with
186 member states, including Canada, expected to approve the world's first
anti-drug agreement.

Prime Minister Jean ChrE9tien is notable for his absence at a summit
attended by Clinton, French President Jacques Chirac, Mexican President
Ernesto Zedillo and almost every president or prime minister in South
America. Canada doesn't appear on the U.N. list of 100 scheduled speakers
because its choice of delegates changed so many times, a U.N. official
said.

The Ottawa delegation, led by Revenue Minister Herb Dhaliwal, doesn't even
surface until today, and Solicitor-General Andy Scott's speech to the
special assembly tomorrow night will be one of the last.

A draft of the agreement shows a global plan veering from the traditional
law-and-order crackdown on drugs to concentrate on illicit plants and
profits. It proposes a worldwide effort to convince kids not to try drugs
and to persuade current users to stop.

The deal sets 2003 as a deadline for all nations to adopt laws against
money laundering; to boost multilateral co-operation between police forces
and the justice system; and sign multi-nation deals attacking the illegal
manufacture, trafficking and abuse of synthetic drugs.

Special emphasis at this summit is being placed on ways to tackle the huge
surge in sale and use of amphetamines, lab-produced drugs, and
illegally-used chemicals.

The pact sets 2008 as a goal for eliminating or reducing the illegal
farming of coca, cannabis and opium poppy.

``Global coca leaf and opium poppy acreage totals an area less than half
the size of Puerto Rico,'' said Pino Arlacchi, under secretary-general of
the U.N. international drug control program (UNDCP). ``There is no reason
it cannot be eliminated in little more than a decade.''

The summit aims to ``create momentum towards a drug-free world in the 21st
century,'' U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan told delegates. ``For the
first time (the proposed pact) addresses the responsibility of nations
where consumption is a problem as well as that of nations where production
is a problem.''

Human rights groups blasted the summit for supporting regimes that allow
torture, the death penalty and illegal police tactics in punishing drug
dealers and users. A group of 500 former world leaders, Nobel laureates and
assorted experts - including Toronto's Jane Jacobs - signed a letter to
Annan decrying U.N. anti-drug policy. The group also paid for a two-page
New York Times ad and TV commercials with the message that ``the global war
on drugs is now causing more harm than drug abuse itself.''

Checked-by: (Joel W. Johnson)