U.S. NEEDS TO ENLIST CUBA IN WAR ON DRUGS

When it comes to Cuba, American policy is one of curious
exceptions.

U.S. policy favors engagement with communist China but isolation of
Cuba. American companies invest in Vietnam but our government punishes
foreign companies that do business in Cuba.

Ordinary American citizens were encouraged to travel to the then-
Soviet Union but are fined thousands of dollars for traveling to Cuba.
Americans believe in family values, but our laws make criminals of
Cuban-Americans who exceed federal limits on family visits and family
charity.

We also make a misguided Cuban exception in the war on
drugs.

This past November, officials from 23 nations attended a conference on
drug enforcement and prevention, but Washington groused because the
conference was sponsored by Cuba and took place in Havana.

Even though the region is a funnel for 40 percent of America's cocaine
supply, our anti-drug engagement with Cuba remains strictly limited.
We cooperate only in response to specific drug shipments.

Communications were improved somewhat toward the end of the Clinton
administration. Our Coast Guard was authorized to communicate directly
with Cuban patrols by radio, fax and phone, and a U.S. Coast Guard
officer was assigned to our diplomatic mission in Havana.

At the time, skeptics argued that Cuba was untrustworthy, corrupt and
itself involved in the drug trade. To his credit, President Bush has
maintained these new channels, which have begun to pay off.

When Cuba mounted a special three-month drug enforcement operation
last year, for instance, Cuban authorities and the Coast Guard
exchanged intelligence on nine shipments passing through Cuban waters
and air space. The joint operation yielded seven sizable seizures of
marijuana and cocaine.

Our allies in the drug war collaborate with Cuba routinely and
consider the relationship professional and productive. From training
to interdiction, law enforcement officials from Canada, Britain, Spain
and France - as well as Interpol and the United Nations - all give
their Cuban counterparts high marks. Cuba now has formal anti-drug
agreements with 27 countries.

Cuba has an extraordinarily strong incentive to fight drugs: to
prevent its own drug consumption. Drug use was practically eradicated
in the first three decades of the Castro regime. Its political
isolation insulated Cubans from bad as well as good foreign
influences. Consumption began to increase in the 1990s as Cuba opened
itself to trade and tourist travel. Last summer, more than 7 kilograms
of marijuana were seized in an airplane at a popular beach resort.

Geography makes Cuba an attractive transit point for cross-Caribbean
shipment. But no single nation - Cuba, the United States or any of the
other dozen countries frustrated with the pace of the drug war - can
successfully go it alone.

The former U.S. drug czar, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, calls for a far more
strategic approach: closer ties between the U.S. Coast Guard and Cuban
border guards, law enforcement exchanges, training of Cuban
interdiction personnel and funding for joint anti-drug education
efforts - all with protocols, just as we employ with other nations, to
safeguard sensitive U.S. intelligence.

For the lives ruined, for the families devastated, for the public
health costs incurred in the United States, we are obliged to pursue
all conceivable avenues in hopes of defeating the drug cartels. To do
less is to abdicate our own responsibilities to America's children.

A U.S.-Cuban anti-drug alliance will not be problem-free, but that
need not limit our anti-drug efforts. In the battle against Burmese
heroin traffic, we join forces with China; around the globe, we forge
counter-narcotics pacts notwithstanding even the most profound
political differences. Only with Cuba do these kinds of reservations
paralyze us.

Rather than wonder about Cuba's resolve, let's put it to a test. Let's
challenge Castro to commit to a series of specific joint initiatives.
We could start by formalizing exchanges of law enforcement personnel
and authorizing U.S. participation in multilateral training exercises.
We could go on to send advisers to Havana to help stem growing demand
on the island.

Tentative intiatives in this direction have been promising. But they
have been stymied by concerns deriving less from anti-drug strategy
than from concerns about domestic U.S. politics.

There's no time to waste. After Sept. 11, the ships and aircraft of
the U.S. Coast Guard have been redeployed for port security missions
along our own coasts. During the four months since, the head of the
Drug Enforcement Administration reports a 25 percent increase in
illegal trafficking in the eastern Caribbean.

At least as far as the drug war goes, we can no longer afford
exceptions. After all, a ``war on drugs'' that needlessly neglects a
750-mile-wide island in the center of the Caribbean is no war at all.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Note: William Delahunt (D-Mass.), a former prosecutor, represents the
10th District of Massachusetts in the U.S. House of Representatives,
where he serves on the Judiciary and International Relations
committees. Philip Peters, vice president of the Lexington Institute,
served in the State Department under Presidents Reagan and George H.W.
Bush.