U.S. OFFICIAL PREDICTS DROP IN COLOMBIAN COCAINE

MEXICO CITY -- High-level arrests and huge drug seizures in Mexico have had
no effect on the quantity of Colombian cocaine entering the United States,
the American drug-enforcement chief, Asa Hutchinson, said here today.

But Mr. Hutchinson said the offensive opened today by the Colombian
military against guerrillas, whom he called "narco-terrorists," could be a
significant turn in the war on drugs.

"I cannot make the case" that Mexico's recent arrests of suspected drug
kingpins and seizures of multi-ton drug shipments have lessened the
seemingly limitless supply of Colombian cocaine that Mexican cartels ship
to the United States, said Mr. Hutchinson, chief of the United States Drug
Enforcement Administration.

Still, he repeatedly praised the government of President Vicente Fox for
"vigorously rooting out corruption in government and going after the
cartels that operate so openly in Mexico."

"We're beyond litmus tests" for Mexico's government in the drug war, he
said. "We have full confidence that they're working aggressively."

So are the cartels. A senior Mexican drug-enforcement official was
assassinated in his car this morning in Mexico City, eyewitnesses said. The
official was identified as Mario Roldan Quirino, a leader of a special
counternarcotics unit under Mexico's attorney general, Rafael Macedo.

As Mr. Hutchinson spoke to reporters in Mexico City, Colombia's military
was attacking territory held by guerrillas who hijacked a domestic airliner
and kidnapped a senator on Wednesday. Mr. Hutchinson said the United States
would welcome an assault on the guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia, whom he called "narco-terrorists" working in league
with Colombia's drug lords.

He predicted an intelligence windfall if Colombia's military and police
forces seized drug labs in the guerrillas' domain. That could "strengthen
what we're trying to do to reduce that supply of cocaine that is funding
that organization," he said.

The drug war in the Andes suffered a setback in April when an American
missionary and her baby were shot down over Peru in a plane that Central
Intelligence Agency contractors first noticed on radar and Peruvian pilots
misidentified as a drug flight. Mr. Hutchinson said he hoped the aerial
drug patrols would resume with new procedures "to avoid this type of
catastrophe."

Mr. Hutchinson became the drug-enforcement chief in August. While the
United States government has been focused on fighting in Afghanistan and
running counterterrorism operations, he said, the drug war goes on.

In Afghanistan, the source of most of the world's heroin, the planting of
opium poppies, from which heroin is derived, resumed in full force in
November, after the fall of the Taliban, which had almost completely
eradicated opium cultivation the preceding year.

The Drug Enforcement Administration is "working aggressively to develop a
plan" to stop the resurgence of Afghanistan's drug culture, Mr. Hutchinson
said, calling the present situation there "a unique opportunity in history."