U.S. FINDS DRUG TRADE TIED TO TERROR GROUPS

Extent Of Connections Called `Shocking'

WASHINGTON - The United States has determined that about one-third of
foreign terrorist organizations are trafficking in narcotics on a large
scale, providing authorities with "shocking" insight into how two of the
nation's most serious threats are connected, U.S. Attorney General John
Ashcroft said Tuesday.

"Law enforcement has been aware for some time of significant linkages
between terrorism and drug trafficking. But we have not had the tools to
quantify the drugs-terrorism nexus until now," Ashcroft said in a speech at
the annual conference of the Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force.

Earlier this year, Ashcroft said, he asked federal law enforcement agencies
to draw up such a list, quantifying all the major trafficking groups
responsible for the U.S. drug supply.

"Following extraordinary collaboration and information-sharing between
agencies, this list has been developed, and what it reveals is shocking,"
Ashcroft said. "Nearly one-third of the organizations on the State
Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations appear also on our
list of targeted U.S. drug suppliers."

Cross-matching the lists is providing authorities with substantial leads in
their ongoing global war on terrorism, Ashcroft said, as well as helping to
combat the growing problem of drug traffickers responsible for selling
cocaine, heroin and other drugs worldwide.

Ashcroft's remarks came as U.S. authorities, working with state and local
officials and their counterparts in Mexico, announced that they had
arrested more than 2,120 fugitives along the Southwest border in recent months.

Ashcroft did not elaborate on which terrorist groups are suspected of being
involved in drug trafficking. Justice Department officials would not
comment on what organizations are on the drug trafficking list, except to
say that Al-Qaida was one of them.