German ‘Cocaine Chemicals’ for Colombia Worry U.S. : Drug war: The flow of drug-making solvents to Colombia rose 438% last year. American exports were slashed.

A fourfold increase in West German exports to Colombia of chemical solvents used in producing cocaine has provoked deep concern within the Bush Administration about a rapidly emerging European role in fueling Latin American drug production, according to senior U.S. officials.

The sudden surge establishes West Germany as the leading source of the solvents and has more than filled a void created when new U.S. regulations slashed American shipments of the restricted chemicals to Colombia by nearly half, the officials said.

Analysts said that an internal U.S. government study completed this year found that the West Germany-to-Colombia flow of ether, acetone and other so-called “cocaine chemicals” jumped 438% last year and now make up nearly two-thirds of Colombian imports.

Not all of the shipments described as being from West Germany were produced by German companies or were shipped from German ports, U.S. officials said. But all were arranged by West German brokers in what officials said indicated a new-found belief by drug traffickers that these merchants would arrange such deals without questioning the chemicals’ ultimate use.

Administration officials said they plan to cite the new findings during the Houston economic summit next week as part of a high-priority effort to persuade West Germany and other European nations to adopt chemical export controls.

While West German officials last month assured Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh that they take the matter seriously, the high-ranking U.S. officials said they believe it will be necessary to step up the pressure on West Germany, whose industries helped build a Libyan chemical weapons plant.

“I think we should be very tough with the Germans and everybody else,” a senior State Department official said Thursday. “They cannot get by simply by telling us that they plan to act.”

The United States, long the leading supplier of the chemicals to the region, was thought to to have maintained that status last year, when its exports to Colombia jumped 40% to a record 8,287 metric tons. But officials were stunned to discover that West Germany sent 14,313 tons of the chemicals to Colombia in the 12-month period.

Such volumes of solvents would supply the needs of legitimate Colombian industry many times over, according to U.S. experts, who said that as many as 9 gallons in 10 of some imported chemicals wind up being diverted for use in illicit cocaine production.

And while U.S. chemical exports plunged 45% in the first six months of this year as a result of new regulations that bar shipments to 70% of once-regular Colombian customers, Administration officials said they believe that exports by West Germany to Colombia have continued to increase.

“There has clearly been a switch in chemical supply,” said Gene R. Haislip, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s director of the office of diversion control.

In the Houston meetings with the four major industrialized European democracies plus Canada and Japan, which begin Monday, President Bush is expected to propose the formation of an international task force on chemicals control, according to informed sources.

Officials said that the United States learned of the magnitude of the West German shipments by examining import records provided by the Colombian government. While Peru, Bolivia and other cocaine producing countries have not made such records available, the officials said that they believe West German exports have increased sharply throughout the region.

Counter-narcotics officials attributed the huge increase in chemical shipments to Colombia last year as part of an effort by traffickers to amass large stocks in anticipation of new controls by manufacturing countries. They predicted that the heavy volume in chemical trafficking will continue as long as the solvents remain available on the open market.

Providing the necessary chemicals to drug-producing nations is among the most direct ways in which industrial nations fuel cocaine production. Raids of remote jungle laboratories frequently uncover vast stocks of solvents, sometimes in containers still bearing the insignia of American or European manufacturers.

West Germany and other nations last year signed a United Nations convention pledging to take specific steps to shut down the chemical flow. But only the United States actually has ratified the document and imposed its own chemical-control measures.

Administration officials first confronted the Bonn government with the evidence of its increasing role in the chemical shipments earlier this year, provoking what one source called a “mini-diplomatic war” as West German officials challenged the findings.

Thornburgh then raised the matter during a conference in Dublin last month with his Bonn counterpart, Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, in what a Justice Department official termed “direct and candid” discussions.

In a private letter to President Bush on June 19, Thornburgh described the extent of the new West German exports. He also reported that the West German government appeared to be “sensitized” to the issue, sources said.

Haislip, the DEA official who has been serving as a principal negotiator with the West Germans, said in an interview Thursday that he believes Bonn is willing to limit exports through a “firm increase in legislative controls.”

“I think we have turned a certain corner in that situation because of the response with the German government,” the DEA official said. He asserted that the more pressing challenge is to persuade other European countries not to assume the mantle as the “support and sustenance for cocaine traffic.”

NEXT STEP

President Bush is expected to propose an international task force on control of “cocaine chemicals” when he meets with the leaders of the world’s other big industrialized democracies in Houston next week. These nations include Europe’s big-four chemical producers--West Germany, Britain, France and Italy. The task force would seek ways to restrict exports to Latin America of ether, acetone and other solvents used to refine cocaine.