Pubdate: Sat, 28 Aug 1999 Source: Reuters Copyright: 1999 Reuters Limited. Author: Stephen Brown U.S. Official Says Drugs Taking New Lat Am Routes BUENOS AIRES - U.S. anti-drugs chief Gen. Barry McCaffrey said Friday that drug producers in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia are finding new routes to U.S. and European buyers through Brazil and Argentina. After meeting Argentine President Carlos Menem and anti-narcotics officials from southern Latin America, McCaffrey said that illegal drugs increasingly are being smuggled through Brazil and Argentina, which share borders with major drug-producing nations. The two largest economies in South America do not produce coca leaf for cocaine or heroin poppies. But their frontiers are littered with airstrips and crisscrossed with jungle rivers that are hard to police. McCaffrey's comments in Argentina came on the last stop of his tour of Brazil, Peru, Bolivia and Argentina, a trip whose focus has been on what he called an "incredible emergency" in Colombia's battle against drug producers and leftist guerrillas he claims are in collusion. McCaffrey said the United States has succeeded in stopping air smuggling from Colombia, but traffickers now use sea routes from Peru, Ecuador and Venezuela and increasingly use the busy commercial ports and airports of Brazil and Argentina. "Significant amounts from Bolivia go out through Brazil, probably to Europe, and clearly there is drug smuggling out of Buenos Aires to Europe and the United States all hidden among huge amounts of legal commerce," he told a news conference. The White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy, which he heads, estimates that up to 1,000 tons of raw coca from neighboring Bolivia, the world's third-largest producer, enter Argentina every year for a growing domestic market. Argentina lacks radars to control thousands of airstrips in the north. In addition, smuggling of all sorts of goods is endemic on rivers from Brazil and Paraguay, and free trade in the local Mercosur customs union forbids opening sealed containers in transit. "Couriers of Bolivian cocaine from Buenos Aires' Ezeiza International Airport are primarily destined for Europe, including Russia," a report from McCaffrey's office said. Paraguay, landlocked in the center of South America with a shaky democracy and awesome reputation for graft, smuggling and money laundering, is a transit point for up to 40 tons of Bolivian cocaine bound for Argentina, Brazil, Europe and the United States, said the U.S. report released to Reuters. Argentina's anti-drugs director Eduardo Amadeo said Menem had told McCaffrey of his concern over the "traffic in drugs toward the south of the continent" and the use of Argentina's waterways by cocaine smugglers. Amadeo said Menem was determined that Argentina's Congress pass a bill controlling the laundering of drug money, while Mercosur -- Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay with Bolivia and Chile as associate members of the trade bloc -- was "actively exchanging information" on the illegal drug trade. The fight against drugs in the region, although tame compared to Peru and Colombia, has a history of violence and corruption. Paraguay's anti-drugs chief was gunned down in 1994 and the country was "decertified" as a U.S. anti-drugs ally this year, although a Paraguayan official did meet McCaffrey in Buenos Aires Friday. Bolivian President Hugo Banzer, praised by McCaffrey for reducing coca output by "36 percent in two years," has been embarrassed by his niece's marriage to an Italian mafia suspect indicted in Bolivia's Santa Cruz last week on drugs charges. One of Amadeo's predecessors was arrested last year for allegedly embezzling cash from an anti-drugs campaign. Menem, who has recommended the death penalty for drug-related murders, was himself embarrassed in 1991 when his sister-in-law and aide was investigated over a drug-money laundering ring. But McCaffrey's office said in its report: "We have no information that any senior member of the (Argentine) government is involved in narcotics-related activities." Under Menem, Argentina has become Washington's strongest ally in the region. McCaffrey said after meeting Interior Minister Carlos Corach that President Clinton had said it was "enormously important" that he hear Menem's view on drugs. - --- MAP posted-by: Derek Rea