*EPF318 03/01/00
Text: 1999 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report
("Policy and Program Overview" summarizes main developments) (5530)

The U.S. State Department's 1999 report on international narcotics production and trade says that current anti-drug programs are succeeding in disrupting production and trafficking patterns, tightening law enforcement systems and strengthening measures against money laundering.

The 1999 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, released March 1, nevertheless says that the drug trade remains a "formidable enemy," with "access to financial resources available to few national governments."

Traffickers become more sophisticated each year, the report says, adapting to counternarcotics strategies and retaining the ability to move hundreds of tons of cocaine to markets in the United States and Europe as well as to Latin America, Asia, Africa and the former Soviet Union.

"In what resembles economic alchemy, drug syndicates transform an intrinsically cheap, available, and easily renewable commodity (e.g., coca leaves) into an almost inconceivably remunerative product," the report says. "In terms of weight and availability, there is currently no commodity more lucrative than drugs."

It points out that the U.S. government's fiscal year 2000 budget for international drug control operations is about $1,500 million dollars. "That is the street value of approximately 16 metric tons of cocaine. The Mexican drug cartels have lost that much in a few shipments and barely felt the loss."

The wealth they accumulate gives to the syndicates "an almost unlimited capacity to corrupt," the report says. "In many ways the drug syndicates are a greater threat to democratic government than many insurgent movements."

The most striking single development in the drug trade in 1999, according to the report, was "the continuing, steady decline in the Andean coca crop, the source of all the cocaine destined for the United States." The numbers reflect a rise in coca production in Colombia but sharp declines in Peru and Bolivia, the former top world producers.

The report notes the Clinton administration's proposed $1,300 million assistance program to Colombia to support anti-drug efforts in that country as well as strengthen democracy and revitalize the economy.

The document reports "worrisome signs" of increasing use of heroin by young people in the United States, with most of it coming in 1999 from Colombia or Mexico, although those two countries account for less than six percent of world opium poppy production.

The report argues that the annual U.S. process to certify that countries are cooperating with international efforts to stem the drug trade has been an effective means of shedding light on drug corruption, which it says needs darkness to survive. "Though controversial, throughout the 14 years it has been in effect the certification process has proved to be a powerful policy instrument," the report says. "Its strength lies in its reliance on public, rather than on traditional diplomacy. In a sharp departure from the confidentiality inherent in traditional bilateral diplomacy, public diplomacy stresses openness and transparency.

"Because of its public nature, the drug certification process makes every government concerned publicly accountable for its actions, including the United States," the report says. "While the United States Government obviously cannot certify itself, most governments recognize that the President of the United States cannot issue such an important public declaration without being certain of -- and held accountable for -- his facts. The goal of the certification process is not to sanction; it is to hold all countries to a commonly acknowledged international standard of cooperation. By its nature it also exposes the United States to full public scrutiny by the rest of the international community. We become as accountable as any other country for our successes and our failings. As uncomfortable as it may be for all concerned, it is a healthy process."

The full 1999 narcotics report is available on the State Department Web site at:
http://www.state.gov/www/global/narcotics_law/1999_narc_report/index.htm

Following is an excerpt from the "Policy and Program Development" chapter of the report:

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POLICY AND PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT

POLICY AND PROGRAM OVERVIEW FOR 1999

The drug trade had little to celebrate at the end of the twentieth century. Successful international counternarcotics efforts over the past few years have gradually narrowed the drug syndicates' field of action. Crop reduction and chemical control programs have caused major shifts in cultivation and refining operations. Effective law enforcement operations have fragmented the large cartels that once dominated the cocaine trade. Better interdiction now forces traffickers constantly to shift transportation routes to move drugs to market. Improved judicial systems make it more difficult for drug criminals to buy their freedom, while tougher extradition laws deny them the national safehaven they once could count on. Also, closer international cooperation among governments and financial institutions has made it more difficult for the drug trade to legitimize its profits through money laundering schemes.

The most striking change at the end of 1999 was the continuing, steady decline in the Andean coca crop, the source of all the cocaine destined for the United States. Even taking into account a marked expansion of cultivation in Colombia, overall Andean coca cultivation totals are at a new low. The most dramatic declines occurred in Peru and Bolivia, formerly the world's two principal coca producers. They now rank a distant second and third behind Colombia. At the end of 1999, coca cultivation in Peru and Bolivia was at its lowest point since 1986, when we completed the first accurate surveys of Andean coca.

The joint effort first begun in 1995 to sever the "airbridge" that carried Peruvian coca to Colombian refineries and then to eradicate coca crops paid big dividends by the end of the decade. Of the 115,300 hectares of coca under cultivation in Peru in 1995, only 38,700 hectares remained at the end of 1999 -- a drop of two thirds. But Peru was not the only success story. During the same four-year period in Bolivia, Bolivian government eradication programs cut coca cultivation by more than half, from 48,600 hectares to 21,800 hectares. By any measure, these are remarkable accomplishments. Reductions on this scale were only possible through close, long-term cooperation between the governments of the United States and all of the governments concerned. They are tangible proof of what can be achieved when committed governments work together effectively toward a common goal.

There was also some bad news in 1999. Coca cultivation in Colombia increased by 20 percent. The expansion in the Colombian coca crop, however, came as no surprise. It was a predictable consequence of the successes in Peru and Bolivia. Faced by the ultimate loss of its major source of coca -- and thereby a large source of its income -- the Colombian drug trade has been racing to make up for the shortfall in the other two Andean producers. Realizing that the only way to have a guaranteed source of coca was to plant it in lands under their immediate control, the Colombian syndicates have been steadily moving cultivation to the conflict-ridden south and southwest of the country. Since cocaine profits also in part fund Colombia's principal insurgency, the convergence of interests has led to expanded cultivation in guerrilla-dominated territory, where security conditions make it difficult for the central government to conduct eradication operations. Through this displacement, Colombian cocaine syndicates expanded the coca crop from the 101,800 hectares at the end of 1998 to the current estimate of 122,500 hectares. Yet even with this expansion in coca, the total Andean coca crop at the end of 1999 stood at 183,000 hectares, the lowest figure since 1987.

Another disturbing development is confirmation that the Colombian syndicates have achieved extraordinary levels of efficiency in extracting cocaine from their coca crops. While, as we have reported in earlier INCSRs, we had anecdotal information that Colombian cocaine yields might be greater than initially reported, scientific confirmation did not come until 1999. Fieldwork carried out under Operation Breakthrough, an interagency yield study that has been under way for much of the past decade in the Andean region, indicates that higher yielding varieties of coca are being grown in parts of Colombia. Likewise, preliminary reporting suggests that Colombian laboratory operators are more efficient in processing coca leaf into cocaine base than previously believed. As a result, we adjusted upwards our estimates of potential cocaine HCl production in Colombia over the past five years. In 1999, Colombian refiners potentially produced 520 metric tons of cocaine HCl, a twenty percent increase over the comparable amount for 1998. Yet, even with that enormous ratcheting up of Colombian production, reductions in Peru and Bolivia brought total potential HCl from the Andean countries to 765 metric tons, a five-year adjusted low.

To help Colombia address the problem of drug expansion, the United States has proposed a two-year, $1.3 billion assistance package to strengthen Colombian democracy and reinvigorate the economy, at the same time as we attack the drug trade. In addition to coca eradication, this assistance will help train special counternarcotics battalions, purchase additional helicopters, upgrade the Colombian government's interdiction capability, promote alternative development, and increase the protection of human rights.

Cutting heroin flows to the United States also ranks high on our list of counternarcotics priorities. Though heroin abuse is still relatively limited, there are worrisome signs of increasing use, especially by young people. Stopping heroin at the source is more difficult than attacking cocaine supply. To do so we have to limit cultivation of opium poppy, from which heroin is refined. Unlike coca, which only grows in three Andean countries, the opium poppy can be found in nearly every region of the world. Also, unlike coca, opium is an annual crop and in Latin America can produce as many as three harvests per year. Where a perennial coca bush may not become productive for about two years, one can harvest opium gum an average of four months after planting. A further obstacle to U.S. efforts to limit its cultivation is that nearly 80 percent of the world's estimated opium poppy (141,000 hectares out of some 178,000) is cultivated in Burma and Afghanistan, countries where the United States has limited influence.

The opium poppies that interest us most, however, are those grown in Colombia and Mexico. Though these two countries together cultivate less than six percent of the world's total opium poppy, their production has a significant impact on the United States. Most of the heroin identified in the United States in 1999 was of Colombian or Mexican origin. With such a small crop supplying such a large share of the market, opium poppy control programs in those two countries can seriously affect the flow of heroin to the U.S. The United States Government estimates that in 1999 Mexico took out of production some 7,900 hectares, leaving 3,600 hectares for opium production. This is the lowest figure since 1992. In Colombia, however, opium poppy cultivation increased by 23 percent to 7,500 hectares. This figure would have been much larger had Colombian authorities not destroyed more than 8,000 hectares of opium poppy in 1999.

DRUG SYNDICATES SUFFER

Capturing key traffickers demonstrates -- to the criminals and to the governments fighting them alike -- that the syndicates are highly vulnerable to coordinated international pressure sustained over time. In the Western Hemisphere, the drug syndicates continued to suffer reverses, as key governments pursued the leaders of the major organizations. In October 1999, Operation Millennium, a joint effort involving the Colombian and U.S. governments, resulted in the arrest of scores of major Colombian traffickers. More significantly, it disrupted an international drug trafficking network that reached as far as Peru, the United States, and Europe.

Mexico continued to strike at the Juarez cartel. In 1999, Mexican law enforcement and military units moved against the remnants of the Carrillo Fuentes Organization operating in the state of Quintana Roo, especially in the resort city of Cancun. The Government of Mexico formally indicted Quintana Roo's governor, Mario Villanueva Madrid, on numerous drug trafficking charges stemming from his association with Alcides Ramon Magana. Until late 1998, Magana, in collusion with remnants of the cartel, had been coordinating multi-ton cocaine shipments from Colombia into the Yucatan. The ex-governor is a currently a fugitive. Also among those arrested was Juan Quintero Payan, co-founder of the Juarez Cartel.

PROMOTING INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE

An underlying premise of our international drug control strategy has been to promote long term change in key national institutions of the main drug source and transit countries. Through training programs conducted by the principal U.S. Government law enforcement agencies, we have helped governments to modernize and professionalize law enforcement agencies. In an effort to narrow the opportunities for manipulation by the drug trade, we have worked to assist governments in strengthening their judicial and banking systems. Without a professional judicial system based on the rule of law and administered by officials of integrity, the best law enforcement operations can come to naught. There have been instances where law enforcement agencies in key drug-affected countries have captured and jailed prominent traffickers, only to see them set free by the arbitrary decision of a single judge or magistrate. Thanks to several long-standing cooperative administration of justice programs, such instances are becoming rarer. In 1999, several countries continued to modernize their laws and professionalize their court systems through reforms ranging from installing more modern equipment to major changes in the way judges are appointed. Though there will undoubtedly continue to be instances of judges arbitrarily dismissing evidence against or releasing well known drug traffickers, we can expect to see the number of such cases decline, as governments make basic reforms such as giving judges better pay and greater personal protection, while streamlining administrative procedures.

EXTRADITION

Aside from dying at the hands of their rivals, there is perhaps no sanction that drug lords fear more than extradition to the United States. The long sentences already meted out to notorious international drug criminals by U.S. courts are stark reminders of what can happen to even the most powerful cartel leaders when they are subject to a justice system that they cannot manipulate through bribes and intimidation. Extradition for such crimes, however, is still far from universal. In many countries, where sovereign jurisdiction is politically sensitive, the laws still prohibit the extradition of their nationals. Powerful drug criminals are adept at exploiting such national sensitivities to their advantage. For example, a ban on extradition in the 1980's and 90's allowed the Medellin and Cali cartels to use their prisons as a high-security drug operations center.

In November, Colombia marked an important turning point in counternarcotics cooperation. Colombian authorities extradited a Colombian citizen to the United States for the first time in nine years, fulfilling one of the United States Government's most sought-after but elusive counternarcotics goals in that country. Despite narcotics traffickers' attempts to throw up legal roadblocks, and at least one bombing possibly linked to the extraditions, the Colombian government now appears ready to send narcotics traffickers to justice in the United States regardless of citizenship. The Colombian government's courageous decision to reverse the ban on extradition diminishes the possibility of a domestic safehaven to the current generation of drug syndicates. Other countries that extradited nationals to the United States in 1999 were Mexico and Pakistan. We hope to see similar actions by other countries whose nationals currently enjoy legal or de facto immunity from extradition.

MONEY LAUNDERING

No matter how large the profits of the drug trade, drug money is worthless until it can be moved into legitimate financial and commercial channels. Disguising deposits of hundreds of millions of illegal dollars is not easy. International drug syndicates probably devote as much energy and ingenuity to finding ways of legitimizing their profits as they do to producing and moving drugs. They have been forced to become more creative thanks to international success in gradually closing off the drug trade's back avenues to international banking and financial systems. Working with our partners in the Financial Action and Caribbean Financial Action Task Forces, in 1999 we focused on expanding collective measures to make it as difficult as possible for the drug trade to legitimize its illicit fortune, especially in offshore financial institutions that accept money with few questions asked. Though several countries' financial institutions are still willing to turn a blind eye to -- or even solicit -- funds of questionable provenance, there has been progress over the past year. Thailand, for example, passed money-laundering legislation called for in the 1988 U.N. Drug Convention. Such actions move us closer to our common goal of eventually excluding drug money altogether from the international financial system.

THE DRUG TRADE -- A FORMIDABLE OPPONENT

Though we can take pride in our progress at the end of the century, we are still a long way from putting the drug trade out of business. As one of the pillars of international organized crime, it remains a formidable enemy. It has access to financial resources available to few national governments, without formal restraints on how they can be used. The drug syndicates also have the advantage of experience. Long before transnational crime had become recognized as a genuine threat to international stability, the Colombian and Mexican syndicates already had in place an impressive network of supply centers, distribution networks, foreign bases, and reliable entree into the governments of source and transit countries. They pioneered many of today's advanced money laundering techniques, hiring first-rate accountants, and investing in state-of-the-art technology. Even after suffering considerable losses, the drug trade's wealth, power, and organization equal or even exceed the resources of many governments.

International drug trafficking becomes more sophisticated every year, as it adapts to counternarcotics offensives. Although our collective efforts to cut drug traffic in 1999 have kept drug traffickers on the defensive, they were still able to move hundreds of tons of cocaine not only to the United States and Western Europe, but to markets in Latin America, Asia, Africa the NIS and CIS countries. The major drug trafficking syndicates are the criminal equivalent of large multinational organizations, with drug distribution centers and money laundering on every continent. But they are not alone, as Italian, Albanian, Turkish, Russian, Nigerian, and Southeast Asian crime syndicates, to name but a few, compete successfully for a share of the business.

The drug trade also promotes and adapts to changing trafficking and consumption patterns. It seeks to blur the lines between cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine-consuming countries. During the past few years we have observed more polydrug use, with addicts combining cocaine and heroin to offset each drug's respective stimulant and depressant effects. National tastes are also changing. Europe, once the preserve of the heroin trade, has developed a growing appetite for cocaine and amphetamines. In parts of Eastern Europe and Russia, cocaine sells for up to $300 per gram, three times the average cost in the United States.

In North America, heroin consumption has been gradually increasing, as cocaine use has declined sharply from skyrocketing use during the 1980's. (Between 1985 and 1998, the number of cocaine users dropped 70 percent, from 5.7 million to 1.8 million estimated users and has not risen appreciably since.) Although heroin use has not risen proportionately, the growing willingness of American high school students to experiment with heroin is disturbing. According to the 1998 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse released in August 1999, the rate of initiation for youths from 1994 to 1997 was the highest since the early 1970s. Though we cannot yet say whether this is the beginning of a trend, the Colombian and Mexican drug syndicates' major investment in heroin production indicates that they view the United States as a lucrative and expanding market for heroin. Given the drug trade's record in anticipating -- and stimulating -- market demand, the drug syndicates' persistent cultivation of opium poppy must be a cause for concern.

DANGEROUS SYNTHETICS: METHAMPHETAMINE AND ECSTASY

Another troubling development is the growing popularity of methamphetamine and the related drug, MDMA ("Ecstasy"). These stimulants are now an important and highly lucrative component of the international illegal drug market. Methamphetamine rivals cocaine as the stimulant of choice in many parts of the globe. The demand for methamphetamine and other synthetic stimulants, including amphetamines and MDMA, has been on the rise not only in the industrialized nations, but also in many countries of the developing world. In Thailand, for example, methamphetamine has displaced heroin as the most heavily abused drug.

The relative ease of manufacturing methamphetamine and the similarity of the refining process for MDMA appeal as much to small drug entrepreneurs as to the large international syndicates, since neither has to rely on vulnerable crops, such as coca or opium poppy. Synthetics allow individual trafficking organizations to control the whole process, from manufacture to sale on the street. Synthetics also have large profit margins and can be made anywhere from commercial chemicals. Mexico is the principal foreign supplier of methamphetamine and precursors for the United States, but there are centers of methamphetamine production in countries as far apart as Burma, Poland, Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, and North Korea. The United States has its own domestic methamphetamine production, as demonstrated in 1999 by the seizure of 1,916 methamphetamine laboratories by DEA and another 1,984 by state and local authorities.

Ecstasy, an amphetamine derivative, is another drug that is growing in popularity. Ecstasy first gained notoriety in the 1990's along with the "rave culture" that swept over Europe's younger generation. Ecstasy's stimulant properties furnished the chemically induced stamina to dance for hours at all-night discotheque parties known as "raves." It has now developed an international cult following, as one can see from Internet sites that give detailed instructions on how to make and use MDMA "safely." Most of the MDMA available on the European drug market is manufactured in clandestine laboratories in the Netherlands and in Poland.

One pernicious aspect of Ecstasy is that many of its users do not consider it a dangerous drug. It is seen as a non-addictive stimulant. When an addictive drug develops a reputation for being relatively benign, efforts to suppress it become correspondingly difficult. Seizure data in many of this year's INCSR country chapters indicate a surge in Ecstasy consumption in Europe, suggesting that the drug's popularity is on the rise. France and Estonia are cases in point. But we have our own Ecstasy problems. The University of Michigan's Monitoring the Future study noted a rise in Ecstasy use by high school students. In 1999, slightly more than four percent and five percent of tenth and twelfth graders respectively reported using the drug.

PRECURSOR CHEMICALS

But even synthetics have their Achilles' heel. Traffickers who manufacture stimulants and other synthetic drugs need precursor chemicals that they cannot produce themselves. Whereas opiates and cocaine require widely available and relatively substitutable "essential chemicals," amphetamine production requires "precursor chemicals", such as ephedrine, pseudoephedrine or phenylpropanolamine. These chemicals have important but fewer legitimate uses and are commercially traded in smaller quantities to discrete users. It is crucial to chemical control that each country have an effective, flexible system that regulates the flow of key precursor chemicals, without undue burdens on legitimate commerce. For that reason, the United States, the European Commission, and the U.N.'s International Narcotics Control Board worked in 1999 with key governments to strengthen an informal multilateral system of information exchange on chemicals.

CONTROLLING DRUG SUPPLY

Our mission is to stem the flow of drugs to the United States. How effectively we do so depends on our ability to attack drug supply at critical points along a five-point grower-to-user chain linking the consumer in the U.S. to the grower in a source country. Where cocaine or heroin are concerned, the chain begins with the growers cultivating coca or opium poppies, for instance, in the Andes or Burma, and ends with the cocaine or heroin user in a U.S. town or city. In between, lie the processing (drug refining), transit (shipping), and wholesale distribution links.

Our international counternarcotics programs target the first three links of the grower to user chain: cultivation, processing, and transit. The nearer to the source we can attack, the greater our chances of halting drug flows altogether. Where crops are destroyed or left unharvested, no drugs can enter the system. It is analogous to removing a malignant tumor before it can metastasize. Crop control is by far the most cost-effective means of cutting supply. In an ideal world, with drugs halted at the source, none could enter the distribution chain and there would be no need for costly enforcement and interdiction operations.

In the real world of counternarcotics programs, however, crop control has enormous political and economic implications for the producing country, for it inevitably means attacking the livelihood of an important sector of the population. Implementing crop control programs takes time, as governments develop alternatives for the affected population. As a result, while pursuing the goal of crop elimination, we cannot neglect the processing and distribution stages. Our programs therefore must constantly direct resources toward those links where we can have both an immediate and a long-term result.

Though eradication is the most direct way of eliminating a drug crop, it is not the only way. In many countries, large-scale eradication is neither politically nor socially feasible. As our experience the past few years in Peru and Bolivia has shown, the right combination of effective law enforcement actions and alternative development programs can produce truly remarkable results. We therefore work closely with the governments of the coca growing countries to find the best way to eliminate illegal coca in any given national context.

REDUCING COCA

The coca crop offers the best prospect for dramatic reductions for several reasons. Coca is confined to a specific geographical region. Significant coca cultivation takes place in only three countries -- Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia -- and with modern technology we can locate the growing areas precisely. Thus, unlike a multi-ton load of finished cocaine distributed among trucks, boats, and aircraft, a coca field is a large, stationary target. Eliminating coca on the ground is also highly cost-effective. Current studies indicate that in Bolivia and Peru, where alkaloid content is high, every 200 hectares of coca taken out of production deprives the drug trade on average of a metric ton of refined cocaine. So even manual eradication can make a difference. But our high-speed spray aircraft offer a more effective alternative. If these planes had unobstructed access to the principal coca plantations, they could destroy a large percentage of the coca crop in a matter of months using environmentally safe herbicides.

Because the situation varies from country to country, the United States Government has been working with each Andean government to find the best way to eliminate illegal coca in the light of prevailing local conditions. Crop reduction successes in Peru, Bolivia, and the traditional growing areas of Colombia have created a new situation by driving coca production into areas in southern and southwestern Colombia controlled by the insurgency. The situation has therefore become simultaneously better defined and more dangerous. The concentration of coca cultivation in a geographically confined area gives counternarcotics spray aircraft a better target. But the determination of the guerrillas and the drug trade to protect their vital source of income by quasi-military action poses a new level of threat to eradication aircraft that were not designed for use in hostile environments. The United States Government's proposed $1.3 billion narcotics assistance to Colombia over the next two years should offer new possibilities of dealing with this problem.

POLITICAL WILL

While cooperative anti-drug programs have proven their value, the most powerful defense against the drug trade is an intangible -- political will. If political will is weak where organized crime is strong, corruption soon sets in. Left unopposed, such corruption ultimately vitiates the rule of law and puts democratic government in jeopardy. Consequently, a basic objective of U.S. counternarcotics policy is to prevent drug interests from becoming entrenched by bolstering political will to oppose illicit drug trade in the key source and transit countries. In those countries where political leaders have had the courage to sacrifice short-term economic and political considerations in favor of the long-term national interest, we have seen the drug trade weaken. And where political will has faltered, the drug syndicates have prospered accordingly.

THE POWER TO CORRUPT

The drug trade's ability to subvert even relatively strong societies stems from its access to nearly unlimited amounts of money. In what resembles economic alchemy, drug syndicates transform an intrinsically cheap, available, and easily renewable commodity (e.g., coca leaves) into an almost inconceivably remunerative product. In terms of weight and availability, there is currently no commodity more lucrative than drugs. Illegal drugs are relatively cheap to produce and offer enormous profit margins that allow the drug trade to generate criminal revenues on a scale without historic precedent. At an average retail street price of one hundred dollars a gram, a metric ton of pure cocaine has a retail value of $100 million on the streets of a U.S. city -- two or three times as much if the drug is cut with adulterants. By this gauge, the 100 or so metric tons of cocaine that the United States Government typically seizes each year are theoretically worth as much as $10 billion to the drug trade -- more than the gross domestic product of many countries. Even if only a portion of these profits returns directly to the drug syndicates, we are still speaking of hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars. To put these sums into perspective, in fiscal year 2000 the United States Government's overall budget for international drug control operations is approximately one and half billion dollars. That is the street value of approximately 16 metric tons of cocaine. The Mexican drug cartels have lost that much in a few shipments and barely felt the loss.

Such boundless wealth offers the large trafficking organizations an almost unlimited capacity to corrupt. Though less obvious, in many ways the drug syndicates are a greater threat to democratic government than many insurgent movements. Guerrilla armies or political terrorist organizations seek to topple and replace governments through overt violence. The drug syndicates, on the other hand, covertly seek to manipulate existing governments to their advantage and guarantee themselves a secure operating environment. They can do so only by co-opting the right officials. A real fear of democratic leaders should be that one day the drug trade might take de facto control of a country by putting a majority of elected officials, including the president, directly or indirectly on its payroll. Though it has yet to happen, in the past few years there have been some disquieting near-misses. By keeping the focus on eliminating corruption, we can forestall the possibility of a government manipulated by drug lords from ever becoming a reality.

THE CERTIFICATION PROCESS AND CORRUPTION

Drug corruption thrives in the shadows. It needs anonymity for survival. Since it shuns the light, the best way to attack drug corruption is to expose it regularly to public scrutiny. The drug certification process offers a means of forcing corruption to the surface. It gives the U.S. government the legislative equivalent of an international spotlight to shine on corruption. Section 490 of the Foreign Assistance Act requires the President to certify annually that each major drug producing or transit country has cooperated fully or has taken adequate steps on its own to meet the goals and objectives of the 1988 U.N. Convention, including rooting out public corruption. Governments that do not meet the standard lose eligibility for most forms of U.S. military and development assistance; they also face a mandatory "no" vote by the United States Government on loans in six multilateral development banks.

CONTROVERSIAL BUT EFFECTIVE

By now, most governments know that U.S. law requires the President to provide this annual assessment of counternarcotics cooperation based on factual information. Setting certification benchmarks is not a unilateral process. Through regular and sustained consultation throughout the year, we work with our partners to establish realistic, mutually acceptable goals for certification evaluation purposes, based on goals and objectives of the U.N. Convention. Though controversial, throughout the 14 years it has been in effect the certification process has proved to be a powerful policy instrument. Its strength lies in its reliance on public, rather than on traditional diplomacy. In a sharp departure from the confidentiality inherent in traditional bilateral diplomacy, public diplomacy stresses openness and transparency. Because of its public nature, the drug certification process makes every government concerned publicly accountable for its actions, including the United States. While the United States Government obviously cannot certify itself, most governments recognize that the President of the United States cannot issue such an important public declaration without being certain of -- and held accountable for -- his facts. The goal of the certification process is not to sanction; it is to hold all countries to a commonly acknowledged international standard of cooperation. By its nature it also exposes the United States to full public scrutiny by the rest of the international community. We become as accountable as any other country for our successes and our failings. As uncomfortable as it may be for all concerned, it is a healthy process.

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(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: usinfo.state.gov)
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