29841: (news) Chamberlain: Haiti-Drug Trafficking (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By STEVENSON JACOBS

   PORT-AU-PRINCE, Jan 13 (AP) -- Drug traffickers are increasingly
favoring planes over boats to smuggle U.S.-bound cocaine from South America
into Haiti and the Dominican Republic, U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson said Saturday.
   The Florida Democrat attributed the drop in sea smuggling to a 1998
agreement allowing U.S. drug agents to patrol Haitian waters for drug
traffickers.
   "It has been successful and the amount of drugs coming in by sea has
been reduced," Nelson told reporters at the end of a two-day visit. "But
the amount of drugs coming in by airplane has considerably increased."
   Most of the small planes originate from southern and northwestern
Venezuela, Nelson said. Venezuela is a major transit point for drugs --
primarily cocaine -- being smuggled out of Colombia for the United States
and Europe.
   In a speech this past week, Haitian President Rene Preval said U.S.
anti-drug aid has not significantly stopped the flow of illegal drugs into
his impoverished Caribbean country.
   Nelson, who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said
Washington's agreement with Haiti only allows U.S. authorities to stop drug
traffickers at sea -- not by air -- "because obviously we cannot interdict
the plane unless we shoot it down."
   The senator said he agreed with Preval's call for more help fighting
drug traffickers but stressed that Haiti's national police is the main
defense against cocaine-smuggling flights.
   "The main way of solving the drug problem coming by air into Haiti is to
get the Haitian national police to where they can arrest them when they
land," Nelson said.
   Haiti's police is among the region's most corrupt, with only a few
thousand officers to patrol the nation of 8 million.