New Anti-Drug Plan Would Use Military

The Bush Administration, in an effort to close off new smuggling routes used by South American drug traffickers, has drafted plans to expand the use of U.S. troops and military helicopters in Guatemala, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica, Bush Administration officials confirmed Sunday.

Under one proposal now being circulated by the Administration to lawmakers, about a dozen U.S. Army Blackhawk helicopters--piloted by Army aviators--would ferry local law enforcement officials on drug raids in all three countries. It would cost about $30 million over two years.

The proposal, drafted by the Drug Enforcement Administration, would expand upon an existing drug-fighting plan being conducted by the U.S. Customs Service and Coast Guard. It would use more U.S. military pilots than the current plan does.

But although it has gotten a tentative go-ahead from the Bush Administration, officials cautioned that the DEA plan may still be rejected by the governments that would be asked to play host to the beefed-up drug-fighting forces.

One Bush Administration official called the plan “a minor expansion” of a blueprint already in place.

“Our past efforts have driven traffickers to more difficult scenarios, and we’re trying to drive them into even more difficult areas” by expanding two existing counternarcotics operations, one official said.

Under the DEA plan, “Operation OPBAT”--which has been run out of the Bahamas, Puerto Rico and the Turks and Caicos Islands--would move westward to the Dominican Republic and Jamaica.

The proposal appears to be part of a larger shift in the focus of U.S. drug-fighting efforts since the Peruvian government suspended democratic rule in that country earlier this year. Since then, one Bush Administration official said, Washington has sought to boost its efforts to interdict drugs during their manufacture and shipment rather than at their principal source in Peru.