CAMBODIA REMOVED FROM DRUG-TRANSIT LIST

Not A Threat To U.S., Says Bush

WASHINGTON - President Bush removed Cambodia from the list of the world's biggest drug traffickers Friday, because he said the heroin transit that put the Southeast Asian country on the list five years ago has posed no threat to the United States.

That dropped the number of nations still on the list of major drug- transit countries to 23. They include Afghanistan, the target of U.S. military action for the ruling Taliban militia's harboring of terrorists, and Nigeria, whose leader met in Washington with Bush on Friday.

Cambodia was added to the list in 1996. In recent years, Bush said, officials have seen no evidence that heroin routed through Cambodia has found its way into the United States.

"I have determined that Cambodia no longer meets the standard for a major drug-transit country," Bush said. "I will, however, keep it under observation as a country of concern."

Other countries on the majors list remained the same: Bahamas, Bolivia, Brazil, Burma, China, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Haiti, India, Jamaica, Laos, Mexico, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Thailand, Venezuela and Vietnam.

Countries are placed on the list because of geographical, commercial and economic factors that allow drugs to move through them, not because of a lack of enforcement. Membership on the list can lead to economic sanctions if the State Department should determine a country's government does not cooperate with U.S. counternarcotics agencies.

Bush noted a rise in trafficking to the United States from Europe of illegal synthetic drugs such as ecstasy, "an emerging problem that we are studying closely." He said the drug probably was being manufactured in the Netherlands, where officials are working with the United States to curtail ecstasy production and export.

The president also listed 13 "countries (or) economies and regions of concern," places that have been major drug trafficking regions in the past or could be soon. He said he listed them so Congress would know where his administration is focusing its anti-drug efforts.

Among those were Hong Kong and Taiwan, both of which President Clinton dropped from the majors list last year. Bush said Taiwan had lost its importance to drug traffickers due to the opening of major container ports in southern China, and Hong Kong authorities had reported no large seizures of U.S.-bound heroin in the past four years.

Other worrisome countries or regions are Belize, Central America, Central Asia, Cuba, Eastern Caribbean, Iran, Malaysia, North Korea, Syria and Lebanon, Turkey and neighboring Balkan countries and "major cannabis producers."

Bush identified Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, Morocco, the Philippines and South Africa as "significant" marijuana producers but did not list them because the drug is either consumed locally or sent to countries other than the United States.