GUATEMALA OFF DRUG-FIGHT LIST

Slap Follows Drop In Drug Seizures, Rise In Corruption

GUATEMALA CITY -- In a rebuke to an old U.S. ally, the Bush administration
on Friday announced that Guatemala would be dropped this year from the list
of nations cooperating in the war on drugs.

The decision came after Washington had been uncommonly outspoken about a
sharp drop in Guatemalan drug seizures, incidents of police stealing rather
than intercepting Colombian cocaine and allegations of involvement by
ranking officials in the 4-year-old government of President Alfonso Portillo.

While U.S. officials waived a congressional rule that would require them to
cut Guatemala's $50 million in U.S. aid, the decision is a major diplomatic
embarrassment for Guatemala and places it with Haiti as the only two
countries in the hemisphere out of compliance.

Thefts Outnumber Seizures

"Police [in Guatemala] stole twice the quantity of drugs they officially
seized," said Paul Simon, the State Department's top counternarcotics official.

In an annual memo on drug enforcement to Secretary of State Colin Powell,
President Bush also expressed concerns that Canada is becoming the source
of high-potency marijuana and pseudoephedrine, an ingredient in the drug
methamphetamine, coming into the U.S.

The president also warned about an increase in Ecstasy and other illegal
synthetic drugs entering the United States, particularly from Europe. He
singled out the Netherlands as an Ecstasy production center.

Joining Guatemala and Haiti on the list of uncooperative countries was
Myanmar, the former Burma.

The diplomatic scolding of Guatemala by the U.S. marked a steep fall from
grace for a country that long had enjoyed U.S. support, all the way back to
the 30-year conflict in which a string of right-wing governments battled
left-wing insurgents in a civil war that left more than 200,000 dead.

However, Portillo's corruption-plagued government has produced few results
in combating the trafficking of Colombian drugs through its part of the
Central American isthmus. It is believed to be the pathway for up to 40
percent of the cocaine and marijuana that reaches the U.S.

The reprimand reflects U.S. concerns that go far beyond the anti-drug
failures. For months, Washington has voiced its displeasure about
corruption in the country, which some consider to be the worst in the region.

There are also concerns about a perceived lack of will to implement the
provisions of a peace accord that ended hostilities in 1996 and a
deteriorating security situation in which clandestine gangs have attacked
and threatened human-rights activists, judges, opposition leaders and
forensic anthropologists trying to uncover the truth about war atrocities.

The State Department has backed calls for an international commission to
investigate the clandestine groups and whether any of them have connections
to government, ruling party or security officials.

Portillo's party is controlled by former Gen. Efrain Rios Montt, who ran
Guatemala as a military dictator in the 1980s and who is now the elected
president of the Guatemalan congress. Many believe that he will also be the
party's candidate in presidential elections scheduled for November.

'This Goes Beyond Drugs'

"This goes beyond drugs," said Manuel Orozco, director of the Central
America project at the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based think
tank. "This is a way to put the government in check, not only on
narco-trafficking, but also on the other side of the equation, which is
government corruption."

U.S. officials emphasized that they agreed to the aid waiver for Guatemala
only out of concern that a loss of aid would have been counterproductive in
getting Guatemala to resume a crackdown on drugs.

Warned last fall that they could be decertified, Guatemalan officials had
stepped up their anti-drug efforts in recent weeks by making more arrests
and burning confiscated narcotics. Recently, the government sacked almost
all the agents in the country's corrupt anti-narcotics police unit.

Guatemala criticized the U.S. decision, saying that the Bush administration
had been misled by Portillo's political opponents and warning that the
announcement could harm negotiations that opened this week on a Central
American Free Trade Accord.

"We were only characterized like this as a unilateral measure that does not
respect the equality of nations, and for that we reject it," said Edgar
Gutierrez, Guatemala's foreign minister.

Human-rights activists expressed concerns that Guatemala would now focus
too much on drugs, distracting the country even further from human-rights,
justice and democracy issues.

"It's important for us to focus not just on drugs but on the broader
problems in Guatemala," said Adriana Beltran, Guatemala program director
for the Washington Office on Latin America.

Until three years ago, Guatemalan police were seizing as much as 10 or 11
metric tons of cocaine every year. That amount has dropped to 2 metric tons
a year or less.

Among the notorious cases of police corruption was the theft of more than 2
tons of cocaine from a government warehouse. In another case, police
announced they had seized 500 kilos of cocaine off a boat, only to have
authorities find out later that the same police had stolen 1,500 additional
kilos they had found on the boat.

Last year, the U.S. canceled the visas of several Guatemalan officials,
including Francisco Ortega, a confidant and adviser to Portillo who was
accused of involvement in organized crime and drug trafficking.