Suriname a Growing Cocaine Center, Officials Say : Drug war: The South American country’s military strongman is deeply involved in the illicit trade, U.S. law enforcement agencies say.

Suriname, a small, isolated nation on the northern edge of South America, has grown into a major narcotics center, serving as a central transshipment point for the growing flow of cocaine to Europe, according to Surinamese and senior U.S. officials and international narcotics experts.

Senior U.S. officials and Surinamese opposition leaders say the country is also becoming an important transshipment point for the U.S. drug market and may have become a center for large-scale, permanent cocaine laboratories, as well as a safe haven for traffickers.

These sources as well as a summary of Western intelligence findings on narcotics activities in Suriname say the army commander, Lt. Col. Desi Bouterse, 45, allowed his country to become a major transshipment center in the late 1980s. He is a former sergeant who promoted himself after seizing power in 1980.

According to the opposition leaders and sources in Suriname, the army allows and protects the use of numerous unregistered airstrips to transship cocaine.

The Western intelligence summary listed as “significant violators” of narcotics laws nine Surinamese officials, including Bouterse, two Colombians who allegedly served as contacts with the Medellin cocaine cartel and three companies in Suriname and the Caribbean.

“Suriname’s importance as a conduit for cocaine flowing to Europe and the United States is growing,” the summary concludes.

The Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on terrorism, narcotics and international operations, chaired by Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), is investigating allegations that Bouterse used the Bank of Credit and Commerce International to launder millions of dollars in drug profits.

A senior U.S. official monitoring the region said, “There is no question in the view of the U.S. government that there is significant army, and probably some police, involvement in narcotics trafficking in Suriname.”

Bouterse, who formally turned over the government to an elected civilian president in September, could not be reached from outside the country, and two journalists’ inquiries about visas met with indications of long delays.

However, according to published reports, Bouterse denied in August any involvement with drug trafficking following Dutch newspaper reports that he personally presided over a major cocaine operation, including refineries in the jungle.

Prospects for curtailing the flow of cocaine through Suriname depend in part on who controls the country--Bouterse or the elected government that succeeded him. The new president, Ronald Venetiaan, is described as a respected civilian leader. But U.S. officials and academics said the army, which Bouterse still controls, retains much of the political and economic power, and the 1987 constitution, overseen by Bouterse, gives the military wide latitude to intervene in politics.

In a speech to the United Nations on Sept. 26, Venetiaan said that “Suriname too is among the victims of the evil that is illicit trafficking and use of drugs” and that “with the restoration of democracy in Suriname, we have met one of the basic requirements for expanded and intensified international cooperation.”

The Drug Enforcement Administration recently sent its first team to Suriname to evaluate the situation, U.S. officials said.

Wim A. Udenhout, Suriname’s ambassador to the United States, said in an interview that European law enforcement officials now estimate that about 60% of the cocaine reaching the Dutch port of Rotterdam, one of the largest European narcotics distribution centers, passes through Suriname.

Udenhout said that there is “reason to believe a large-scale investigation is warranted” into allegations of military involvement in narcotics trafficking and that the role of Bouterse “is still under review by the (new) government.”

U.S. officials and narcotics experts said an increasing amount of cocaine is being transshipped from the coast of Suriname in small boats to larger boats on the high seas that carry drugs to the United States. A senior U.S. narcotics expert said that because most of the cocaine and money from Suriname passes through Europe, “it did not come up on our radar screen until fairly recently, and now we are doing what we can.”

Knowledgeable sources who live in Suriname and are familiar with the sparsely populated central and southern regions of the Georgia-sized country said there are at least two restricted military airstrips able to accommodate DC-3s and larger aircraft there, as well as numerous unregistered airstrips for small aircraft in regular use throughout the area, especially close to the Brazilian border.

The sources said that the army has grounded private flights around those areas without explanation, and that there have been incidents in which small private airplanes, even after filing flight plans, have been shot at. The sources also said there were persistent, credible reports of large-scale cocaine laboratories operating in the area.

“We do not think there are labs there; we know there are,” said Carlos Freeman Jr., 69, an American who has worked with the anti-Bouterse forces for six years as a military adviser and a spokesman. “Our people (the resistance) have seen them.”

U.S. officials, intelligence documents and opposition leaders say Bouterse opened up the country as a transshipment point to the Colombian cartels, which flew the cocaine into the interior in small airplanes or used boats to send it downriver from Brazil.

A contract written in Dutch and signed by Henk Goedschalk, governor of Suriname’s central bank and, according to printed accounts, a close associate of Bouterse, calls for Camari Corp., based in the Netherlands Antilles, to lend the government of Suriname $200 million “in cash,” to be deposited “in bank account number 01007647 in the Miami branch of BCCI.”

Goedschalk denied signing the contract when it was revealed in August. At an October press conference, however, he acknowledged that he had signed the agreement but said the deal was not carried through.