U.S. HELPS TRAIN ANTI-DRUG FORCES TO STOP SEA TRAFFIC

Coast Guard Conducts Rare Joint Exercises With Navies

ABOARD USS GENTIAN -- The Nicaraguan navy frigate knew nothing about
the suspicious fishing boat speeding north along the Caribbean Coast
except its menacing name: Chupacabras.

The frigate intercepted the boat, named for a mythical blood-sucking
creature, and sent a search team on board, guns drawn. Nicaraguan
sailors climbed slowly toward the bridge. Then a gunman sneaked up from behind.

Good thing for the sailors, this was only a test.

"Never leave your back uncovered," said the New York-born instructor,
Michael Hernandez. "That's the best way to get killed."

It was December near Puerto Santo Tomas de Castilla, Guatemala, and
the U.S. Coast Guard was conducting rare joint exercises with navies
from across Central America, whose waters have become a principal
transshipment route for cocaine from Colombia to the United States.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration estimates that at least 75
percent of the cocaine that enters the United States passes through
some part of Central America, a trend that authorities attribute to
tougher enforcement by Mexico and a reduction in resources sent to
this region in recent years by the United States.

For example the Peten, the northern rain forest of Guatemala, a
rugged and isolated landscape, had been a popular landing area for
small planes carrying loads of cocaine, said Michael P. O'Brien, of
the DEA's Guatemala office. But, he said, as governments have gotten
better at intercepting aircraft, drug shipments have increasingly
been moving at sea.

After Guatemala's chief drug enforcement officer was arrested in
Virginia in November on trafficking charges, President Oscar Berger
publicly acknowledged that his law enforcement agencies and courts
were so rife with corruption that he was working on a request for the
United Nations to take over prosecutions of organized crime.

But U.S. military authorities in Guatemala said in interviews that
they were most interested in helping Central American governments
help themselves. They said the best way for this region's ill
equipped and poorly financed armies to combat some of the most
powerful criminal organizations in the world was to work together.

"Bad guys know no borders," said Cmdr. Eduardo Pino, captain of the
Gentian. "And if you are talking drug traffickers, you're talking
about a wealthy opponent, one that can afford the best equipment and
technology."

It has not always been easy, said Capt. Stephen Leslie, of the U.S.
Coast Guard, to bring together nations with histories of border
disputes. The Nicaraguans were leery of entering Honduran waters,
Leslie said, and Guatemala initially refused to allow entry to Coast
Guard boats from Belize.

After months of U.S. pressure, Leslie said, not to mention promises
of money for parts and equipment, the countries agreed and held the
first joint naval exercises in February and the second in December.

Leaders of the region's navies said joint military exercises had
already begun to pay off.

Capt. Celvin Castro Alvarado, commander of Guatemala's Caribbean
Naval Base at Puerto Santo Tomas de Castilla, said that on June 14,
Guatemala captured about 3,300 pounds of cocaine after forcing a
speedboat to run ashore. The capture, he said, was a result of a
joint chase, first by Honduras and then by Belize, which forced the
boat into Guatemalan waters.

Capt. Manuel Salvador Mora Ortiz, chief of Nicaragua's Atlantic Naval
Command, said his troops had seized nearly 2,000 pounds of cocaine in
November from a boat whose captain had claimed to be fishing for lobster.

Still, said Castro, for every boat authorities captured, at least
four got away.

"This war is asymmetrical," he said. "What drug traffickers have is a
wealth of resources. They have a lot of money. They have advanced
radios and guidance systems.

"We have very limited resources. And a lot of our equipment is antiquated."