DEA TO BOLSTER PRESENCE ALONG MEXICAN BORDER, IN CENTRAL ASIA

The Drug Enforcement Administration is deploying agents to beef up its presence in Central Asia and take a bigger role in enforcement along parts of the Mexican border where the FBI has diverted agents to the war on terrorism, DEA chief Asa Hutchinson said this week.

The DEA will step up efforts to curtail the heroin trade in Afghanistan and plans to send 17 additional agents to the region, Hutchinson told reporters Thursday. Officials declined for security reasons to say how many agents are in the region, but they decribed the planned increase as a significant boost.

Drug agents are trying to break up heroin trafficking by controlling the flow of chemicals used to process the drug and working with the governments of Afghanistan and surrounding countries to block exports, Hutchinson said.

This year, he said, poppy production in Afghanistan will be reduced 20 percent to 30 percent but added, "We have to do more."

He said drug enforcement officials remain concerned about the use of drug money in financing political terror in Latin America and worldwide, by groups such as al Qaeda and Hezbollah.

But the DEA task seems destined to become more difficult because the agency must make up for the FBI's decision to divert about 400 of its agents from drug investigations to the fight against terrorism.

"We want to make sure there is no gap," Hutchinson said. "We're scrambling, and we're working hard. . . . We've got to make sure we're acting efficiently," he said.

If Congress approves, he said, 34 DEA agents and a small number of support workers will be moved from DEA headquarters in Crystal City to drug interdiction efforts along the U.S.-Mexican border in Texas. The FBI is transferring 60 of its drug investigators in that region to terror-related work.

One hundred DEA positions will be shifted to try to cover the shortfall created by the FBI's pullback on drugs. The DEA also is relying more heavily on local law enforcement officials to fill in where needed.

Hutchinson said his agency may seek more resources from Congress.

Hutchinson's comments came at a briefing that marked the end of his first year as head of the drug agency. Among the achievements he cited was a decline in the purity of cocaine being sold on American streets.

He credited joint international efforts in disrupting cocaine trafficking, specifically citing the governments of Bolivia and Colombia. "It's hard to imagine how cooperation could be at a higher level," he said.

While dealers have kept the price of cocaine constant, its purity has dropped 9 percent over the past several years, he said.

Hutchinson said he is optimistic that cooperation will continue under the new regime of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, who took office Wednesday in an inaugural ceremony marred by a fatal attack by leftist guerrillas.