Bush urged to boost efforts with Cuba to thwart traffickers
Posted at 10:48 a.m. EDT Wednesday, August 29, 2001 Miami
Herald
WASHINGTON -- (AP) -- Anti-Castro sentiment is preventing the United States
from helping Cuba combat drug traffikers' increasing use of the Caribbean island
as a transit point for cocaine and marijuana, former White House drug policy
director Barry McCaffrey said Tuesday.
McCaffrey said the Bush administration should ask a reluctant Congress to
approve sharing intelligence on drug operations and develop targeted training
programs with the Cuban government.
He said domestic outrage with President Fidel Castro, heightened during the
Elian Gonzalez case and the shooting down of a plane carrying three Miami
activists, prevented him from opening a dialogue with the Cubans on ways to
jointly fight drug trafficking.
"Our current policy is mistaken and we do need to engage them on this
issue,'' McCaffrey said in a speech at Georgetown University.
About 40 percent of cocaine in the United States is transported through the
Caribbean and Cuban waters are increasingly being used as a transit point for
South American suppliers, U.S. officials say.
Low-flying planes fly over Cuba's offshore islands, dropping bundles of
cocaine that are picked up in speedboats destined for the United States. Cuban
officials reported that in 1999 alone more than two tons of cocaine from
airdrops washed ashore.
Cuba has denied the U.S. Coast Guard permission to enter its waters in
pursuit of drug smugglers. But in the past 10 months, Cuba has allowed the Coast
Guard to station an officer there to help monitor drug shipments on a
case-by-case basis. He is known to have participated in only one drug seizure to
date, of several hundred pounds of marijuana, Coast Guard Cmdr. Brian Kelley
said Tuesday.
U.S. officials also installed a direct telephone line between Coast Guard
officials in the region and Cuban border troops after McCaffrey concluded in
1999 there was no evidence that the Cuban government was acting in collusion
with drug smugglers.
McCaffrey, a retired general, suggested Tuesday increasing the joint effort
by placing a Coast Guard admiral to head a counter drug center in Key West,
Fla., that also would be staffed with a representative of the Cuban border
patrol.
He said the two governments should share intelligence on drug operations and
set up joint training programs in addition to exchanging information on drug
prevention and treatment programs.
Simon Henshaw, a State Department officer who deals with Cuban affairs, said
the Coast Guard officer has had little success in dealing directly with the
appropriate Cuban officials.
Congress has repeatedly blocked efforts to increase cooperation with Cuba on
drug interdiction, citing the belief that either Cuban officials are involved in
the drug trade or that working with them would legitimize Castro's communist
government.
23 Cuban migrants land on Big Pine Key
BIG PINE KEY, Fla. -- (AP) -- A boatload of smuggled Cuban migrants were in
custody Tuesday after landing in the Florida Keys.
The 20 adults and 3 children were found uninjured on Big Pine Key around
1:30 a.m. They said they departed from Havana on a 26-foot fishing boat early
Monday.
More than 2,100 illegally migrating Cubans have been picked up by the U.S.
Border Patrol since October, said Norbert Gomez, assistant chief patrol agent
for the Miami Border Patrol Sector.
The migrants told the Border Patrol that they each paid a smuggler 10,000
Cuban pesos, or $455, for the trip.
Gomez called smugglers "the most unscrupulous type of individual on the
face of the earth'' because of the danger and fees they submit migrants to.
"They prey on the emotional and physical state of the people,'' Gomez
said. "If they were decent human beings, they would do it for free.''
The Cubans were being processed by the Border Patrol and would be turned
over to the Immigration and Naturalization Service's Krome Detention Center in
Miami.
The federal government's so-called wet-foot, dry-foot policy generally
allows Cubans who reach U.S. soil to stay but repatriates those interdicted at
sea.
Copyright 2001 Miami Herald | 
