Cuba prepares new antidrugs law

By Pascal Fletcher

HAVANA, April 25 (Reuter) Cuba, which has reported increased drugs seizures
by its security forces in recent years, is drawing up a new antidrugs law to
cope more effectively with drug trafficking and drug use, a Cuban justice
official said on Friday.

``The law is being prepared. It is at the draft phase,'' Roberto Rodriguez
Lastre, a prosecutor from the Cuban ProsecutorGeneral's Office, told a
seminar on Cuban antidrugs policy held in Havana.

Rodriguez said Cuban authorities were anxious to introduce the new
legislation promptly. It was possible that it could be approved next year, he
added.

The Cuban prosecutor said the law would seek to address all aspects of
illegal drugsrelated activities, typify specific crimes and recommend
penalties in line with international norms. ``It's a question of defending
ourselves against a threat,'' Rodriguez said.

He said that although drugs use in Cuba remained low, the communistruled
island sat astride the main air and sea drugs shipment routes linking
producer nations in Latin America with the main drugs markets in the United
States and Europe.

There had recently been an increase in cases of drug cargoes dropped from
small planes being washed up on Cuban beaches. This, combined with the growth
of tourism, had led to a rise in incidents of Cubans trying to sell the
contents of these beached cargoes to foreigners.

The authorities had responded by making it a criminal offence not to report
beached drug cargoes, known as ``recalos.''

Rodriguez gave no statistics, but Cuba's security forces have recently
reported intercepting several big drugs cargoes in Cuban waters and have also
arrested a growing number of drug carrying foreign ``mules'' at Cuban
airports. Marijuana, cocaine, heroin and other narcotics have been seized.

Another speaker, Enrique Meitin of Cuba's Centre for Studies on the United
States, said the Cuban government was on the offensive against the threat
posed by international drugtrafficking organisations.

Cuba has signed bilateral antinarcotics cooperation agreements with more
than 16 nations, most of them in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Meitin said the United States, which does not have formal diplomatic
relations with Havana, had in the past repeatedly tried to discredit Cuba's
communist rulers by linking them to international drug trafficking.

The response of the Cuban authorities, he said, was the ``exemplary'' Ochoa
case in 1989, in which Cuban war hero Arnaldo Ochoa and three other military
officers were tried and executed for drugtrafficking and corruption.

Both Meitin and Rodriguez noted that cooperation between Cuban and U.S.
antinarcotics forces to stop drug shipments and flights had recently
improved.

Meitin said he believed that Cuba and the United States, despite their
continuing political dispute, could even sign an antidrugs cooperation
agreement similar to the bilateral migration accords they signed in 1994 and
1995.