GUATEMALA EMERGES AS COCAINE WAY STATION

ZACAPA, Guatemala -- An exploding drug trade aided by extensive government
corruption has turned Guatemala into the primary safe haven for Colombia's
cocaine headed through Mexico to the United States, according to U.S. and
Guatemalan authorities.

An estimated 200 metric tons of cocaine passed through Guatemala last year,
more than two-thirds of U.S. consumption of the drug, according to State
Department officials.

The increased flow - nearly triple the amount estimated a decade ago - has
turned parts of Guatemala into lawless zones ruled by family-controlled
transit cartels, a development all too clear in this dry and dusty frontier
state.

Here, where men wear holstered 9-mm pistols in public and judges fear for
their lives, violence and corruption have exploded in recent months, say
local judicial officials.

"It's a kind of Old West," said Alberto Brunori, the regional director of
the United Nations mission here. "There are a lot of people involved in the
drug trade. You can see that."

U.S. concerns over Guatemala's role in the drug trade have been growing for
several years. In the 1990s, drugs traveled from Colombia to the United
States through several Central American countries before arriving in Mexico.

Now, however, U.S. and Guatemalan anti-drug officials believe Colombian
drug traffickers have mostly consolidated their operations in Guatemala
with the cooperation - or at least tolerance - of current and former
Guatemalan government figures.

The drug trade has become so rampant that the Bush administration earlier
this year blacklisted Guatemala for failing to cooperate in the fight
against drugs - one of only three such countries in the world, including
Burma and Haiti.

The U.S. government has also convened a federal grand jury to investigate
charges of corruption involving highly placed government and ex-military
officials for laundering money through U.S. banks, according to Guatemala's
former top anti-corruption prosecutor, Karen Fischer.

Fischer, who resigned in March after allegedly receiving pressure to drop a
money-laundering case involving President Alfonso Portillo, said she has
offered to serve as a witness for the U.S. case, which involves the
diversion of $15 million in government funds.

U.S. officials said that "an investigation" was underway into Guatemalan
government officials and money laundering, but did not confirm that a grand
jury was involved.

Guatemalan government officials deny that there are any direct, high-level
links to drug traffickers, though they acknowledge that there have been
shortcomings in the drug war the past few years. They blame the United
States for failing to provide enough assistance to combat drug traffickers,
whose speedy boats and airplanes overwhelm the under-funded Guatemalan
police force.

"When we detect a drug boat, we only see the bubbles in the water that they
leave behind," said Zury Rios, a congresswoman and daughter of ex-Gen.
Efrain Rios Montt, president of Congress. "We need support and backing."

Portillo has repeatedly declared his innocence of all criminal charges,
though the multiple investigations against him and his political allies
have placed him under pressure. He broke down in tears at a government
ceremony earlier this month after another scandal involving his political
allies. He told the audience that he was "not going through my best
moments, either as a person, or as the president."

Indications of collaboration between drug traffickers and government
officials are numerous. Last year, officers from Guatemala's anti-drug
police force were accused by local prosecutors of stealing more cocaine
from police warehouses than they seized. More than a dozen anti-drug
officers were convicted this month of holding the small town of Chocon near
the Caribbean Coast hostage as they tortured and killed two residents in an
attempt to steal two tons of cocaine.

Since the start of Portillo's administration, cocaine seizures dropped from
an average of 9.7 tons per year in the two years before Portillo took
office to an average of 2.8 tons per year over the past three years. U.S.
officials believe the decline reflects the effects of paid-off government
officials, not a decline in drug trafficking.