U.S. Considers Multinational Anti-Drug Unit

The Reagan Administration is seriously considering the development of a multinational police force to attack record-setting cocaine production and to aid governments in Colombia and other coca-growing countries in South America that are unable to control the problem, a senior government official said Wednesday.

The unprecedented wide-scale approach is being studied by President Reagan’s National Drug Policy Board, which is expected to make an “expedited” recommendation to Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III, who heads the interagency panel, a board member said.

The senior official and others traveling with Meese on a weeklong presidential mission to bolster anti-cocaine efforts in the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia said the multinational force is “very much in the germ-of-an-idea stage.”

Nevertheless, the proposal is a measure of how seriously the Administration, which has recently been publicly emphasizing domestic efforts to reduce cocaine demand, views the “bumper crop” of the narcotic now flourishing in South American source countries.

“We would have the problem pretty well licked if we could stop cocaine production and transit in these five countries,” the senior official said.

Meese’s trip provided the attorney general with a temporary respite from the pressures in Washington over his legal problems and a recent top-level shake-up at the Justice Department. Meese, who did not address the controversy surrounding him Wednesday, has sought to portray the department as operating “business as usual.”

Centerpiece of Battle

The senior official said he does not expect the multinational force to be discussed by Meese with the several heads of state and justice ministers he is meeting on his five-country trip. But he said the proposal is certain to be a major centerpiece of the Justice Department’s drug battle in the final months of this Administration.

The official and several of his government colleagues, extremely sensitive to diplomatic relations, emphasized that any multinational force could succeed only at the request and cooperation of the countries where it would operate. The officials do not want the operation to be viewed as a U.S.-dominated effort forced upon the other nations.

The senior official spoke hopefully of possible participation in the force by European countries, which are experiencing increased cocaine consumption. The proposed multinational force would provide security for institutions such as the Colombian judiciary, which is under attack by powerful cocaine traffickers, and would work to eradicate drug crops.

A member of the Drug Policy Board accompanying Meese noted that Italy recently pledged $300 million to assist a United Nations’ effort to combat narcotics. This board member said the multinational force is under consideration because “the supply of drugs is overwhelming us.”

He said federal spending for anti-drug efforts has tripled over the last seven years. However, he added, “we will not do the job unless we can get control” of soaring coca production.

“This is a bumper year for dope,” the board member said. In the South American countries, he said, “we expect the biggest coca crop ever” will be harvested, processed into coca paste and finally converted into the white powdery substance put on the drug market.

The senior government official, and several others who spoke on the condition that they not be identified by name, described the multinational force as involving both police and military personnel.

But Drug Enforcement Administration chief John C. Lawn, who confirmed the general outline of the plan, said the force could not involve a direct role for the U.S. military because of concerns over sovereignty by the coca-growing and processing countries.

Lawn cited the 1986 Blast Furnace Operation in Bolivia as an example of an acceptable U.S. military role. In that effort, the United States supplied helicopters that were piloted and serviced by American military personnel to assist Bolivian troops in seeking to eradicate coca crops and to eliminate cocaine laboratories.