CLINTON CALLS FOR LESS FINGER-POINTING IN WAR ON DRUGS

UNITED NATIONS -- President Clinton said Monday that the debate over who
bears responsibility for the world's drug problems has gone on too long and
called for drug-producing and consuming countries to cooperate in stanching
the supply and demand for illegal drugs.

Addressing a special summit-level session of the General Assembly convened
to discuss ways to counter drug trafficking and use, Clinton said that
pointing fingers has not advanced the fight against drugs. "It does not
dismantle a single cartel, help a single addict, prevent a single child from
trying and perhaps dying from heroin," Clinton said. Clinton said that the
lines between countries that produce, transit and consume drugs have
blurred. "Drugs are every nation's problem, and every nation must act to
fight them," he said."

But Clinton heard a blunt rejoinder from President Ernesto Zedillo of
Mexico, who is still fuming over an American undercover operation that led
to the indictment of 26 Mexican bankers last month on charges of laundering
more than $110 million in drug profits. Mexican officials were not informed
of the investigation, apparently for fear that it would jeopardize the plan
and the safety of American agents inside Mexico.

Zedillo said Monday that all countries share the same rights and obligations
to fight drug trafficking. "We all must respect the sovereignty of each
nation so that no one becomes a judge of others, so that no one feels
entitled to violate other countries' laws for the sake of enforcing its
own," he said.

While a overwhelming part of the world's demand for drugs comes from
"countries with the largest economic capacity," Zedillo said, "the human,
social and institutional costs in meeting such demands is paid for by the
producing and transit countries.

"It is our men and women who die first in combatting drug trafficking," he
said. "It is our communities that are first to suffer from violence, our
institutions that are first to be undermined by corruption. It is our
governments that are the first to have to shift valuable resources needed to
fight poverty to serve as the first bulwark in this war." The president of
the Dominican Republic, Leonel Fernandez, said the problem was rooted in the
law of supply and demand. "The demand is what makes the existence of the
market possible," Fernandez said, explaining that the illegal trade it
creates is highly profitable and attractive. He cited an intelligence
estimate that 33 percent of the drugs smuggled into the United States from
South America passes through the Caribbean, and 15 percent specifically
through the island of Hispanola, which is shared by Haiti and the Dominican
Republic.

Prominent among other voices pressing to reduce demand was Britain's deputy
prime minister, John Prescott, who spoke on behalf of the European Union.
"It is no use stopping opium cultivation in one place just to see more grown
elsewhere," Prescott said. "We gain nothing by closing one trafficking route
to see another opened."

President Jacques Chirac of France urged a counterattack on every front.
"Drug elimination cannot be left to a single category of country, whether it
be producer or consumer," Chirac said. "Supply and demand must be reduced
simultaneously."

In his address, Clinton said his administration will request an anti-drug
federal budget exceeding $17 billion for next fiscal year, of which $6
billion will be earmarked for reducing demand.

In announcing several smaller initiatives, he said he would ask Congress to
extend a new advertising campaign to discourage children from using drugs.
The program got under way last fall with an initial $195 million budget, but
Clinton promised to expand this to a $2 billion campaign through 2002, with
part of the money donated by the private sector.

The General Assembly session on reducing production, trafficking and use of
illegal drugs, the first in 10 years to be devoted entirely to the subject,
was initially proposed by Mexico, which has become a transit route for more
than half of the cocaine smuggled into the United States.

Checked-by: Melodi Cornett