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Amid the ballyhoo surrounding Washington's annual
certification of its allies in the international drug war,
the State Department report that accompanies the
announcement often gets overlooked. Yet the International
Narcotics Strategy Report contains the most detailed
regular public analysis by the US administration of the
international trade in illegal narcotics. On Friday, the
administration announced that Colombia, Nigeria,
Afghanistan, Syria, Iran and Burma remained on its
blacklist of states that had failed to cooperate fully
with the US in the fight against drugs. Three others
Belize, Lebanon and Pakistan were deemed not to be
cooperating fully, but economic sanctions against them
were suspended on national interest grounds.

After an intensive discussion within the administration,
Mexico was cited as an ally in good standing, despite the
arrest last month of its top antidrug official. Mr George
Stephanopoulos, a former senior adviser to President Bill
Clinton, said yesterday a bipartisan effort to overturn
this decision and rescind Mexico's certification would lead
to a battle in Congress.

The State Department report said among the successes of
USled attempts to combat the drugs trade last year were
interdiction efforts that forced traffickers to lengthen
their supply lines to the US through the Eastern Caribbean.

A socalled "air bridge" carrying the bulk of Peruvian
cocaine base to Colombia for processing and distribution
had been broken.

This so depressed the price of coca leaf in Peru's Upper
Huallaga valley the world's most important growing area
that growers abandoned fields and contributed to a fall in
coca cultivation by 18 per cent to the lowest levels in a
decade. There was also a 12 per cent drop in Bolivia in
potential coca leaf production, but this was offset by a 32
per cent increase in coca cultivation and potential leaf
production in Colombia, in spite of aggressive aerial
eradication.

Bad news, however, included the growing use of heroin in
the US. Estimates of the US heroin addict population,
static at 500,000 for two decades or more, were being
revised upwards. The more than 2m cocaine addicts in the US
were increasingly using heroin to offset the effects of
cocaine, encouraged by high purity heroin from Colombia
that can be snorted like cocaine. Europe, meanwhile, "has
acquired a voracious appetite for cocaine and
amphetamines".

"The lines between cocaine and heroin consuming
countries are blurring. Cocaine and heroin trafficking,
once limited to a few major routes and destinations in
North America and Europe respectively, has become all but
universal," it said.

Moreover, new threats were emerging. Amphetamines
including methamphetamines such as Ecstasy "are well on
their way to becoming the drug control nightmare of the
next century". Methamphetamines, hybrid cousins of the
"Speed" of the 1960s, were displacing cocaine as the
stimulant of choice, and spreading too into developing
countries. Mexico was currently the principal supplier to
the US, but production centres were spread as widely as
Poland, Japan and the Philippines.

Some reports suggested some heroin refiners in Burma had
added methamphetamine to their product list. Meanwhile,
Burmese production of heroin 60 per cent of the world's
total potential output of 430 tonnes could alone probably
satisfy world demand.

Mexico was the transhipment point for about 80 per cent
of the methamphetamine precursor chemicals going to the US;
and between 5060 per cent of US bound cocaine shipments.

Money laundering was also a grave problem in Mexico. "US
officials consider Mexico the money laundering haven of
choice for the initial placement of US currency in the
world's financial system. Mexican officials acknowledge
they have lost the first round against money launderers
because the system is "permeated by suborned officials,"
the report said. The war on money laundering was weakened
by "endemic corruption". The report also contains the most
explicit official statement yet from the US government
about the activities of Mr Raul Salinas, brother of Mr
Carlos Salinas, former Mexican president.

The Swiss government blocked more than $ 103m (L63m) of
suspected narcotics proceeds in 20 Swiss bank accounts
belonging to Raul Salinas. These were "illegal assets
hidden by the Raul Salinas cocaine trafficking
organisation," the report said. Mr Salinas, awaiting trial
in jail in Mexico, has said the funds derived from
legitimate business dealings.

Daniel Dombey adds from Mexico City: The Mexican
government yesterday announced it had obtained a warrant
for the arrest of Mr Carlos Peralta, a leading businessman,
for tax fraud. Mr Peralta, until recently head of Grupo
Iusacell, a telecoms company, had earlier been caught up in
the scandal surrounding Mr Raul Salinas, brother of former
President Carlos Salinas. In 1996, Mr Peralta said he had
lent $ 50m for investment purposes to the former
President's brother, who has been held since 1995 on
charges of corruption and conspiracy to murder.