DRUG TRAFFIC ENVELOPS TRINIDAD

Government Efforts Win Praise

By Don Bohning, Herald Staff Writer

PORTOFSPAIN, Trinidad Seven miles off the northeast coast of South
America, the twinisland state of Trinidad and Tobago is both blessed and
cursed by its location.

That means access to the region's vast supplies of petroleum and natural
gas. It also means a convenient stop for drug smugglers moving their
illicit product to markets in North America and Europe.

''By virtue of its proximity to Venezuela, Trinidad serves as a significant
transshipment point for Colombian cocaine,'' said the U.S. State
Department's 1997 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report.

''The cocaine is generally transported in small boats . . . from the
Venezuelan coast to various points in Trinidad; it is then prepared for
shipment via container ship or aircraft to the U.S. or to Western Europe,''
the report added.

The drug problem in Trinidad ''is not only a function of geography to
Venezuela but also to Guyana,'' said Ivelaw Griffith, a political scientist
at Florida International University who has just published a book titled
Drugs and Security in the Caribbean: Sovereignty Under Siege.

Griffith, as others, notes that the merchant trading tradition in Trinidad
and Guyana is long and deep, with some of the more unscrupulous among the
traders simply adding another product drugs to their inventory.

Prime Minister Basdeo Panday, whose 2yearold government has drawn high
praise from regional counternarcotics officials for its antidrug efforts,
noted that an estimated 4,400 pounds of cocaine ''passes through Trinidad
per month on its way to Europe and the United States.''

''If the problem remains unchecked,'' said a foreign official bin
PortofSpain, ''it will be the single biggest threat to democracy in
Trinidad and Tobago.''

It's more than a problem of transshipment, Panday said.

LOCAL CRIME

The drugs are flowing into the Trinidad market, too, often as payment from
smugglers to their local contacts, he said. This means turf wars and
shootouts among drug dealers, growing local addiction and ''mass petty
crimes of stealing and robbery by those who are addicted to satisfy their
need, so in this we deal with drugs in the context of crime,'' he said.

Attorney General Rameesh Maharaj estimates that ''60 to 80 percent of
violent crimes'' in the country are drugrelated. ''It's destroying our
human resources. We had to take steps to arrest it.''

OFFICIAL CORRUPTION

Both Panday and Maharaj said another problem is official corruption.

There is evidence, Panday said, ''that they drug traffickers have been able
to corrupt some of our police and even some of our judicial officers at the
lower levels,'' in addition to other government employees in key positions.

Piarco International Airport on the edge of Port of Spain is a prime
example. Security personnel, customs officials, and baggage and cargo
handlers have all been implicated in transshipment of drugs.

Canadian authorities recently seized three shipments totaling 58 kilos of
cocaine, on flights arriving from Trinidad. As a result, the airport
security chief was dismissed and scrutiny of incoming flights was beefed up.

About the same time, officials at Piarco seized another 36 kilos of cocaine
stashed in part of a truck engine being readied for shipment to Miami.

Panday, who heads Trinidad and Tobago's first government dominated by
people of East Indian descent, campaigned for office on an antidrug,
anticrime platform, a hotbutton issue in the country.

His seriousness was a source of skepticism among some regional
counternarcotics officials, given the ambivalence of some Caribbean island
nations toward internationally assisted antidrug efforts, which many see
as an infringement on their sovereignty.

Maharaj, the attorney general, made it clear early on, however, that ''the
greatest threat to our sovereignty comes from the drug lords and the other
transnational criminals . . . we must not be distracted by debating notions
of sovereignty, a concept for which the international criminal has no
respect.''

In March 1996, during a visit by then U.S. Secretary of State Worren
Christopher, the Panday government signed agreements with the United States
calling for mutual legal assistance, extradition and permission for U.S.
ships to pursue suspected drug traffickers into the country's territorial
waters.

DEA TO OPEN OFFICE

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration is expected to open an office in
PortofSpain in the near future.

Other antinarcotics measures that the government has enacted, strengthened
or proposed relate to money laundering, stiffer penalties for drug crimes,
confiscation of assets, an antidrug task force, expedition of drug cases
in the courts, prevention and rehabilitation, and the protection of
witnesses, jurors, police officers and judicial officials.

Trinidad has led the effort within the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) for a
regional witnessprotection program.

In October it was commended for ''its extraordinary efforts in
strengthening its drugcontrol capability, which has resulted in
significant progress,'' at a meeting of major donor countries and
international organizations in the regional war against drugs.

Trinidad's single biggest victory in that war, by all accounts, was the
September 1996 conviction and death sentence for Dole Chadee, a reputed
major drug lord, and eight others for killing a family of four.