VENEZUELAN DRUG ALLEGATIONS PROBED

By The Associated Press

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- Officials ordered an investigation Monday into
reports that Colombian drug traffickers seeking cheaper routes for
U.S.-bound cocaine and marijuana may be financing local election campaigns
in neighboring Venezuela.

Major Caracas newspapers reported Monday that federal investigators
recently arrived in northwestern Venezuela, where a vast jungle border with
Colombia has long served as a jumping off point for drug smuggling, to
investigate the alleged payments to two leftist parties.

The newspaper reports could not be independently confirmed.

If true, the reports would be yet another sign that Colombian kingpins,
frustrated with Mexican smugglers who charge exorbitant prices for running
drugs, are looking to shift more of their business to Venezuela.

The papers, citing local officials in the state of Zulia, said the U.S.
Drug Enforcement Administration was aiding the investigation. But the U.S.
Embassy in Caracas issued a statement Monday saying it ``can affirm that no
DEA agents have been in Zulia state during the month of December.''

Venezuela's top drug official, Carlos Tablante, told The Associated Press
he had no information about any illicit payments in Zulia.

But the attorney general's office issued its own communique saying it was
ordering an investigation into the newspaper reports.

Front-page stories in most of Venezuela's major newspapers Monday reported
that traffickers from Colombia's Guajira Peninsula, a center of drug
cultivation and smuggling, were pouring money into the campaigns of
Venezuelan politicians in the runup to December 1998 elections.

Among the sources cited by newspapers was Zulia state Governor Francisco
Arias Cardenas, who told the AP on Monday that he did not mean to ``make
accusations against anyone.'' And he characterized the probe as a general
investigation into drug trafficking and money laundering in Zulia.

Venezuela is a traditional transshipment point for U.S.- and Europe-bound
Colombian drugs. But in recent years, up to 80 percent of the cocaine
consumed in the United States passed through Mexico, where traffickers
often demand payment in kind from their Colombian suppliers: a kilo of
cocaine for every kilo smuggled.

Tired of paying such high prices, the Colombians are increasingly returning
to the Caribbean routes used during the heyday of the Medellin cartel in
the 1980's, U.S. officials say.

Venezuela, with 1,300 miles of largely unpatrolled border with Colombia and
a corrupt, inefficient judiciary, offers a logical path to the Caribbean
Sea.