LEADERS URGE COOPERATION AT ANTI-DRUG CONFERENCE

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica - When Costa Rican President Jose Maria Figueres this
week urged Latin America's drug czars to reinvent the concept of
sovereignty to better fight international organized crime, some people were
shocked.

"What's that mean?" asked an anti-drug official from a small South American
nation. That they were supposed to let the gringos or somebody else take
over our counternarcotics operations?

Not at all, said U.S. officials attending the International Drug
Enforcement Conference in San Jose. What Mr. Figueres was talking about,
they say, is that better cooperation is crucial if law enforcement
authorities are to defeat - or at least control - the world's major
trafficking gangs.

"We have to work with each other," said Brig. Gen. Carlos Alberto Ayala,
head of Paraguay's National Anti-Drug Secretariat. "Crime is transnational.
Crime has no borders. Well, we can't erase the borders, but we can join
forces."

But working together to catch globe-trotting crooks isn't always easy, drug
agents say. Officials from some countries don't trust their counterparts
from other nations. Indeed, some of those attending the heavily guarded
conference at a San Jose hotel whispered to each other that some in their
midst might be loyal to traffickers and not the law.

"Sure, this place could be infiltrated," one participant said. "Look what
happened in Mexico last year. Their No. 1 drug enforcement official was
mixed up with the Amado Carrillo gang."

Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, former head of Mexico's anti-drug agency, was
arrested last year and accused of taking payoffs from Mr. Carrillo, a
notorious trafficker who died after plastic surgery last summer.

The general has denied the charges but was convicted nonetheless, and
Mexican officials say his ties with the Carrillo gang likely
compromised valuable drug intelligence information.

Mexico's new anti-drug chief, Mariano Herran Salvatti, has vowed to clean
up corruption in his country's counternarcotics forces. And he agreed that
cooperation with other nations - the United States included - is essential.

U.S. and Mexican agents, said to be working together more closely now than
they have in years, traditionally have had a tense relationship. Many
American agents remain bitter over the killing of Drug Enforcement
Administration Special Agent Enrique Camarena in Mexico in 1985. Some of
the Mexicans ultimately arrested in the case had law enforcement ties.

But law enforcement officials at the conference vowed to put aside any
differences and work against the common enemy.

"Now, more than ever, cooperation is needed," Thomas Constantine, head of
the Drug Enforcement Administration, told his colleagues from 30 countries.

"This is a critical period for free society as we struggle to counter these
vicious criminal syndicates," he said. "Every nation here today is being
attacked by predators and their criminal mafias.

"To me, there is really no choice but to win this struggle," he said. "If
we do not win, if the problem continues or becomes progressively worse, if
drug trafficking and abuse continues, even more of our children - our most
precious asset - will become enslaved by drugs."

The first International Drug Enforcement Conference was held in 1983. And
agents say countries throughout the Americas have made steady progress in
working more closely together.

Take the case of Colombia, Peru and Brazil, which share borders. Two years
ago, agents say, traffickers ran circles around the police, hopping from
one country to the next, confusing and confounding their pursuers.

Today, the three countries have united in a range of drug operations with
such names as Friendship II and Porras II. And the traffickers are losing
the upper hand, said Mauro Sposito, federal police superintendent in the
Brazilian state of Amazonas.

"We've seen results," he said. "Not only have we arrested traffickers, we
think we've dealt a psychological blow to these criminals. They know that
police from different countries are working together to put them in jail."

DEA agents throughout the Americas are active in cooperative efforts.

"We become true partners," said Pat Healy, the DEA attache in Brazil.
"We've made great progress in Brazil over the past two years. It's been 110
percent positive."

Many of the 200 or so drug trafficking suspects operating in the Amazon
basin have been arrested or are under constant surveillance, Brazilian
agents say. Sixty planes have been seized, 16 clandestine airstrips have
been destroyed and drug stash sites have been discovered.

In Peru, agents have stepped up their investigation of Colombian planes
found to be picking up drug loads in Peru, then flying them to refining
laboratories back home. Peruvian air force pilots forced down four
Colombian planes in 1997 and shot down seven others, killing most of the
occupants.

"By law we're allowed to shoot down planes that don't obey orders to land,"
said Gen. Dennis del Castillo Valdivia, head of Peru's anti-drug agency.
"It's a drastic measure, but there's no other way to fight organized crime.
These traffickers are very powerful and very wealthy.

"They're the kind of people who use hit men to kill people. And they do not
understand persuasion."