Source: Houston Chronicle Pubdate: Sunday, July 27, 1997, page 23A Contact: Stung by U.S censure, Belize asks international help in its war on drugs By JUANITA DARLING Los Angeles Times BELMOPAN, Belize The big guns of antinarcotics enforcement officials from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Colombian police intelligence and the Mexican federal police gathered quietly last month in this muddy jungle capital. Central America's youngest and only Englishspeaking nation had sought their help because the thousands of cays that Belize is working hard to develop into tourist attractions are attracting the wrong kind of travelers: International drug traffickers have turned some of the small Caribbean islands into storage and pickup points. Indeed, tiny Belize, on Mexico's southern border, is among the 20 or so countries classified internationally as major narcotics transit and production points. Its remote jungles are tempting places to grow marijuana; that old trade provided the perfect new contacts for shipping Colombian cocaine and heroin into the United States. Still, in March, officials here were shocked when the Clinton administration, as part of its annual process, formally declared that their country had failed to cooperate fully in the war against drugs. That "decertification" put this former British colony in the same category as countries such as Colombia, which supplies more than 70 percent of world cocaine and most U.S. heroin and whose president was allegedly elected with campaign contributions from drug barons. It classified Belize the same as it did pariah states such as Afghanistan, Burma, Iran, Nigeria and Syria, which make little or no effort to stop international narcotics operations. The administration, citing its strategic location, deemed Belize important to U.S. national security and gave it a reprieve from the usual cutoff of foreign aid that occurs after decertification. Still, the people of Belize were stung. Ornell Brooks, Belize's 47yearold police commissioner who took office in November, responded aggressively to prove the Americans wrong. "Ides of March" a Belizeorganized and financed operation seized nearly 1.7 tons of cocaine and a small amount of heroin. In early April, a second operation coordinated with the U.S. Coast Guard seized an equal amount of cocaine. "We had two goals," Brooks said of the initial operation: "to cut off the drug from reaching its destination and to facilitate developing investigations both internally and multinationally. Both will lead to the ultimate dismantling of local groups working in collaboration with foreign cartels." Information from the investigations led to Colombia's Northern Valley cartel, one of the new groups that has emerged since the leaders of the Medellin and Cali cartels were jailed or killed. Investigators believe that Albert Gordon, a Belizean fisherman who was arrested in May with information developed from the March and April operations, is a contact here for Jose Nelson Urrego Cardenas, known as "El Loco." Police believe Urrego is the Northern Valley cartel's contact on San Andres Island, Colombia's jumping off point to Central America and the Caribbean. "Clearly, the traffic (in Belize) is managed from ... Colombia and Mexico," a source said. Brooks agreed that the three to five gangs operating in Belize are controlled from outside the country, making international cooperation, such as last month's drug investigators meeting, essential. To combat corruption, Brooks also has ordered the arrest of a police sergeant and corpora, who are are suspected of acting as couriers for local drug gangs. His colleagues were impressed enough by Brooks' results to put him in charge of a June operation in 26 Caribbean countries that netted more than 62 tons of cocaine and 828 arrests. Diplomats acknowledge that Brooks' record is impressive. But they also note that police work alone is not enough. Even Colombians, who are often criticized by Americans for lax sentencing in drug cases, consider Belizean jail terms too short; there is also criticism that Belize imposes bails so low that criminals do not think twice about skipping the country. "Counternarcotics efforts have been undermined by frequent failures to pursue accused criminals or secure convictions in the court system," the 1996 U.S. State Department International Narcotics Control Strategy Report says. "Politics, incompetence and corruption have accompanied undermanned and poorly equipped police investigative efforts. "In fact," the report noted, "Belize has no history of ever sending a prominent citizen to jail."