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On the windchopped Caribbean, small boats pitched and
puttered toward Kingston harbor last week, bearing loads of
snapper, bonito, mackerel, and whatever will bring a price.

It is the"whatever"that concerns the United States,
which wants the power to patrol Jamaican territorial waters
in pursuit of drug smugglers. It is the presence of U.S.
ships that concerns skeptical Jamaicans.

"We don't trust them. That's the point,"Noel Hayden, a
weathered fisherman, said as he sat in a makeshift,
dockside shack."They're a big bully. Maybe not all
Americans are bullies, but the system is a bully."

The sentiment is shared by many Jamaicans, who gained
independence from England just 35 years ago and are loath
to relinquish any of their nation's rights.

The small boats and large apprehensions are only a piece
of what has become a busy battleground in an American
effort to intercept cocaine and heroin shipments from South
America. Those efforts made the Caribbean region,
particularly Jamaica, a diplomatic hot spot.

To catch more traffickers, the U.S. Coast Guard and Drug
Enforcement Administration would like to chase suspicious
boats into their safe ports and hideouts. But the United
States lacks jurisdiction in the territorial waters of the
island nations. At the same time, there is growing
resentment in the Caribbean toward the United States, which
has cut aid to the region while still asking for better
drugenforcement cooperation.

"It's not fair. We have our police for that purpose,"
said Donald Dobson as a halfdozen fellow fishermen, some
eating lunch, some smoking marijuana, nodded their
assent."I'd prefer to be picked on by my coast guard than
another country's coast guard."

Perhaps nowhere has the diplomatic tugofwar between
local sovereignty and U.S. power produced more rope burns
than in Jamaica.

"We intend to maintain our selfrespect,"Prime Minister
Percival J. Patterson recently told the Jamaican
Parliament."We will not grovel."

Perhaps not, but the United States can make life even
more difficult in Jamaica. In the last several months,
Washington has carried a big economic stick into its
negotiations with Jamaica, while not bothering to walk
softly. The State Department has warned Jamaica that it is
in danger of being decertified for direct economic aid for
failing to fully assist in antidrug efforts. But tensions
seemed to ease Friday as the State Department announced
that Jamaica had been recertified.

While the flow of drugs over land and by air has slowed
in the last decade, chiefly because of improved radar
tracking and better patrols along the Mexican border,
according to the DEA, the smugglers have returned to
ageold sea routes to deliver their contraband.

The agency estimates that as much as 40 percent of the
cocaine and heroin entering the United States is
transported by sea through the Caribbean. Approximately 100
Colombian, Venezuelan, and Dominican drug gangs compete for
the lucrative shipping routes, creating a deep wake of
violence and corruption that washes across the
steppingstone islands between South America and the United
States.

"You realize there is a tide pressing against you,"said
K.D. Knight, the Jamaican minister of national security and
justice."And some things have to be done to prevent this
tide from overwhelming you." The United States has"hot
pursuit"agreements with 11 of 14 nations targeted as drug
conduits in the region, but not with Jamaica, Haiti, or
Barbados. At a December meeting of Caribbean leaders,
however, representatives of several nations said they had
signed the agreement only because the United States
threatened retribution otherwise.

When Jamaica lagged in its negotiations, State
Department official Patricia Hall threatened
decertification and intimated that at least one Jamaican
elected official had ties to drug traffickers.

The public reaction in Jamaica was swift and angry,
driving Patterson and the ruling People's National Party
into a tight corner. In this election year, Patterson must
find a way to avoid harsh sanctions from the United States
that might devastate the shaky Jamaican economy, while
saving face on the issue of national esteem.

"These things are said not out of spite, but out of
misunderstanding of our process,"Knight said. "It is a
matter of time, not a lack of will. Both sides want to send
a clear message to drug traffickers that the U.S. and
Jamaica are friends and drug traffickers are the enemies."
Caught between the economic benefits provided by
drugrunners and drugchasers, Jamaica faces being overrun
once again. It is nothing new.

Christopher Columbus discovered the island in 1494, and
the Spanish settlers who followed eradicated the native
Arawak Indians.

Slaves imported from West Africa were farming the land
when England took the mountainous island in the 17th
century and planted it nearly end to end with sugar cane.
England abolished slavery in Jamaica in 1838, but didn't
grant the island an independent government until 1962.

Jamaica, roughly the size of Connecticut, has since
supported itself through farming, the mining of bauxite,
and a tourist economy.

Located halfway between Colombia and Florida, with more
than 1,022 miles of sparsely inhabited coastline, Jamaica
is a perfect stoppingoff or droppingoff point for drug
shipments from South America.

Some drug traffic moves through the islands of the
eastern Caribbean Barbados, Martinique, and Antigua, and
directly into the U.S. territories of Puerto Rico or the
U.S. Virgin Islands. Once drugs are safely on U.S.
territory, they can be shipped anywhere in the United
States without having to clear customs.

Other drug shipments are carried by large ships or
airplanes into the waters near Jamaica, then transferred to
speedboats and taken ashore. From there, the drugs are
transported by boat through the Windward Passage between
Cuba and Haiti, through the Bahama Islands, and then to
Florida.

The DEA estimates that more than 200 metric tons of
cocaine and heroin entered the United States through the
Caribbean in 1996.

Authorities in Florida recovered more than 17,000 pounds
of cocaine and heroin that simply washed ashore last year.

Economic setbacks have left Caribbean nations vulnerable
to the drug trade. Overall U.S. economic aid to the
Caribbean was sliced from more than $ 200 million in 1995
to $ 26 million last year. Jamaica will receive about $12
million in 1997, down from an annual peak of $ 85 million
five years ago, according to a U.S. Embassy official in
Kingston.

Additionally, the North American Free Trade Agreement,
which gave favorable status to Mexico and Canada, has cost
jobs in the Caribbean. Combine high unemployment with a
tightening financial situation and Jamaica is a perfect
target for drug traffickers.

Jamaica, with a population of 2.6 million, had more
than 900 murders in 1996, a percapita rate nearly three
times that of New York City.

Many drug traffickers are paying those who aid the
transport of their merchandise with drugs instead of money,
worsening the problem of drug addiction in the country.

Drugrelated violence feeds resentment toward the
United States. The drug trade is seen by Jamaican officials
as the result of U.S. demand for narcotics, and they point
out that the accompanying crime is usually committed with
weapons smuggled from the United States.