CLINTON TO ATTEND SPECIAL U.N. DRUG SESSION

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - With 190 million people using drugs worldwide,
more than 30 world leaders will gather for a special U.N. session starting
Monday on combating the global narcotics scourge at both the supply and
demand sides.

President Clinton is the first speaker at the three-day General Assembly
session, which will meet literally morning, noon and night to accommodate
over 150 participants.

Other speakers on Monday alone will include presidents, prime ministers or
other Cabinet members from France, Mexico, Portugal, Italy, Argentina,
Brazil, Spain, Peru and Chile and dozens of other countries.

The outcome will be an ambitious political declaration aimed at reducing
drug supply and demand substantially by the year 2008.

The declaration will commit governments to establish new or enhanced
demand-reduction programs by the year 2003 and to "achieve significant and
measurable results" by 2008.

A declaration on the guiding principles of drug demand reduction is
intended to help governments in setting up effective prevention, treatment
and rehabilitation programs and calls for adequate resources to be devoted
to them.

It says demand reduction programs should cover all areas of prevention,
"from discouraging initial use to reducing the negative health and social
consequences of drug abuse." "Drugs are tearing apart our societies,
spawning crime, spreading diseases such as AIDS, and killing our youth and
our future," says Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

"No country is immune. And alone, no country can hope to stem the drug
trade within its borders. The globalization of the drug trade requires an
international response."

The United Nations estimates the number of drug users worldwide now at 190
million.

The session marks the 10th anniversary of a landmark treaty in the fight
against drugs, the 1988 U.N. Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic
Drugs and Psychotropic Substances.

With so many leaders drawn to U.N. headquarters, they are also bound to
discuss, at least privately, a host of recently spawned crises, such as the
fighting in Serbia's province of Kosovo that threatens to ignite a new
Balkan war, the nuclear tests carried out recently by India and Pakistan
and a full-blown conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea.

The special session itself will focus on six key areas:

- - demand reduction, aimed at cutting the number of drug users. The United
Nations estimates that heroin, which it calls the most serious drug of
abuse, is used by eight million people; cocaine by some 13 million; and
marijuana or cannabis, the most widely used drug, by about 140 million.

- - the elimination of illicit crops such as the opium poppy, the coca bush
and the marijuana plant, and the introduction of alternative development
programs, backed up by stronger law enforcement. Afghanistan and Myanmar
together account for about 90 percent of the world's opium poppy, while
Bolivia, Colombia and Peru account for most of the coca crop;

- - money laundering, bank secrecy and offshore havens, all used to
camouflage huge sums of money derived from drug trafficking. The United
Nations estimates the illegal drug trade generates retail sales of some
$400 billion a year, or nearly double the revenue of the global
pharmaceutical industry;

- - amphetamine-type stimulants, including synthetic drugs like speed and
ecstasy, that are becoming increasingly popular and are used by an
estimated 30 million people, or more than use cocaine and heroin combined;

- - judicial cooperation, to ensure that drug traffickers cannot take
advantage of increasingly open borders and markets;

- - precursor chemicals, or the illicit diversion of chemicals used to
manufacture drugs.

All U.N. drug control activities are coordinated by the Vienna-based U.N.
International Drug Control Program (UNDCP), headed by Pino Arlacchi, an
Italian former parliamentarian who made a name battling the Mafia and
organized crime.

In a counterpoint to the Assembly session, a number of private
organizations are taking the opportunity to argue that conventional "wars
on drugs," especially as waged in the United States, can never succeed and
that the objective should be to reduce harm rather than fill jails.

These organizations say syringe exchange programs -- swapping sterile
needles for dirty ones, as is done in some European countries and in many
U.S. states and cities -- can save thousands of lives by preventing the
spread of AIDS and hepatitis.

Such groups also favor making methadone or other synthetic opiates
available to reduce the use of illicit heroin and avert the associated
evils of crime and disease.

Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.

Checked-by: Richard Lake