US Builds Antidrug Alliance with Latin America

By Anthony Boadle

WASHINGTON (Reuters) Tired of playing the bad cop with nothing to show
for it, the Clinton administration has set out to build a new antidrug
alliance with Latin American nations to counter the flow of cocaine and
heroin.

PresidentBill Clinton discussed a multilateral antidrug effort on his
recent trip to South America and a plan will be put to the region's leaders
at a summit in Chile in April.

White House drug czar Gen. Barry McCaffrey said the time has come to stop
the fingerpointing confrontation with Latin American governments and move
to multinational cooperation.

``I don't think the United States can unilaterally direct a war on drugs in
the hemisphere,'' the general said on Wednesday after visiting Colombia,
the world's largest cocaine producer.

``It would be better off if we had a creative multinational partnership,''
McCaffrey told reporters.

A multilateral approach could replace the controversial certification
process by which the United States annually evaluates other nation's
antidrug efforts.

U.S. officials admit certification has little practical effect other than
angering countries which the United States should be trying to engage more
actively in the drug war.

The State Department has proposed creating a multinational counternarcotics
center in Panama to pool intelligence and coordinate operations against the
region's drug traffickers.

A department outline said the center would be run by civilians to blunt
allegations that the initiative was aimed at militarizing Latin American
drug efforts. An earlier plan to create a multinational military force to
fight drugs was shot down by Latin American defense ministers last year.

The U.S. government is negotiating with Panama on the use of Howard Air
Force Base for this purpose after control of the canal reverts to Panama at
the end of the century. This would allow continued flights from the isthmus
by AWAC and Orion reconnaissance planes that track aircraft and boats
suspected of carrying cocaine and heroin across from South America.

Talks are also underway to establish an international law enforcement
academy in Panama to train police and drug agents.

The State Department plan proposed that the Organization of American States
be charged with monitoring implementation of antidrug plans by the
hemisphere's countries.

This plan is likely to face the opposition of some Latin American countries
that object to the OAS's InterAmerican Drug Abuse Control Commission
evaluating their performance.

One promising example of cooperation in the drug war U.S. officials point
to is the disruption of the Andean airbridge with radar stations manned by
U.S. personnel in the jungle regions of Peru and Colombian.

In Colombia, whose government has been denied certification for two years
by the United States due to allegations of corruption, cultivation of the
coca plant, the raw material for cocaine, grew by 32 percent and heroin
production rose to an estimated 6.5 tons last year.

McCaffrey said the increase was in areas held by leftist
''narcoguerrillas'' in alliance with drug traffickers.

A monitoring agreement signed with Colombia in August will allow the
Colombian military to use U.S.supplied helicopters and weapons to fight
rebels involved in the drug trade.

In Bolivia, the United States has spent $850 million over the last five
years to eradicate coca plantations to no effect and U.S. officials are
looking to see what the new government of former military dictator Gen.
Hugo Banzer will do.

Experts said multilateral cooperation would not work if it was a way of
getting Latin American nations to shoulder some of the costs of the drug war.

Latin Americans have long said the United States, as the world's largest
market for drugs, is as much a part of the problem as the cocaplanting
peasants and the drug barons.

McCaffrey said Americans currently spend $49 billion a year on illegal
narcotics. The United Nations reported that 11 percent of the world's drugs
and one third of the cocaine are consumed in the United States.

``Bolivia already spends more per capita fighting drugs than the United
States,'' said Bolivian political scientist Eduardo Gamarra at Florida
International University.

``You cannot ask countries that have nothing to fight a war that is
essentially a U.S. war,'' he said.

Copyright 1997 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.