U.S. Wants Drug Treaty to Replace Certification

The Clinton administration, weary of the bruising annual debate with Congress over whether to certify that Mexico and other nations are cooperating in the war on illicit drugs, wants to drop that process altogether and replace it with an international treaty.

A Western Hemisphere treaty on drugs has been discussed for several years. For the first time, however, the administration has said it regards the treaty as a substitute for certification--rather than an extra weapon in the drug fight.

“I hope in five years the United States, as one of 31 or 30 countries, has become part of a multinational attack,” said Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, the White House anti-narcotics czar. “As we do, that will bury the certification process.”

The proposed anti-drug treaty would create a Western Hemisphere alliance to fight the production and transportation of drugs and set up a secretariat to make sure that alliance members complied with its provisions. The treaty will have a prominent place on the agenda when President Clinton and other Western Hemisphere leaders meet at the Summit of the Americas in Santiago, Chile, in April.

The certification system was slipped into the Reagan administration’s omnibus anti-drug law in 1986 by members of Congress who believed that a weapon was needed to pressure other countries into preventing the production or transshipment of drugs on their territory. The measure was barely noticed in news reports at the time but has since become one of the most controversial aspects of American drug policy.

The prospects for dropping certification are uncertain. There is still strong support for it within Congress, which has the power under the law of reversing the president’s certification ruling within 30 days. It will take time for the United States and the other Western Hemisphere countries to work out a tough treaty that might persuade Congress that there was an effective substitute for the process.

But the willingness of McCaffrey--who is highly respected by Congress--to talk for the first time about burying certification means that the administration is convinced that an alternative to the combative system must be found.

Any change in the certification system would come too late to head off this month’s certification report card and a probable repetition of last year’s battle over Mexico.

Under the law, the State Department must certify by March 1 every year whether countries that produce or transport drugs are cooperating fully with the United States to halt the trade. Countries that fail to win the department’s approval are subject to a cut in U.S. foreign aid and other sanctions.

The department certified Mexico last year, as it had in the past. Refusal to do so would have created a foreign policy mess, humiliating Mexico, damaging its cooperation in the anti-drug effort and poisoning U.S.-Mexican relations on many issues.

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Even so, many members of Congress berated the administration for the decision. As evidence that Mexico had failed as a cooperative partner in the drug fight, they cited endemic corruption and the shocking allegation that Mexico’s federal anti-narcotics czar had actually been on the payroll of a drug cartel.

Some State Department officials and members of Congress insist that certification has worked well, in the sense that it has pressured some countries to become more aggressive in their anti-drug campaigns.

But it has generated resentful anger every year as foreign countries bristle at the prospect of the United States sitting in judgment of them and issuing a public report card. Moreover, it has created tension between the White House and members of Congress who feel the administration certifies some countries for fear of offending them.

The administration and some influential members of Congress feel that these tense side effects far outweigh the good that comes out of the process.

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Mexican officials have consistently opposed the process as unilateral and inappropriate.

Among those in favor of scrapping the certification process is Sen. Paul Coverdell (R-Ga.), who describes the nation’s strategy in the international battle against drugs as flawed. “Instead, the United States should adopt a multilateral approach,” he wrote in the current issue of the Harvard International Review.

Coverdell, a former Peace Corps director, is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere and, according to his staff, has been in close contact with McCaffrey about the proposed international treaty.

Coverdell has scheduled a subcommittee hearing just before the end of this month to review the certification process and discuss alternatives. The administration is expected to release this year’s decisions on certification shortly before then.

But it will not be easy to persuade Congress to drop certification in favor of an international treaty. Rep. John L. Mica (R-Fla.), for example, insists that there is no reason to abandon the present system even if an international anti-narcotics treaty is signed.

“I’m willing to work on an international level,” he told a conference of diplomats, journalists and drug specialists recently. “But don’t mess with our [certification] law. It’s going to get tougher.”

Because of this kind of opposition, Indiana Rep. Lee H. Hamilton, the ranking Democrat on the House International Relations Committee, believes that ratification of an international treaty will not be enough to sidetrack the certification process.

Hamilton, who recently called the process “nuts” for discouraging cooperation instead of enhancing it, insists that Congress must overhaul the system substantially. Hamilton and some Democratic allies would like to change the law so that the president would no longer have to issue an annual public assessment of each country but would still have the authority to impose sanctions on any nation deemed uncooperative.

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Advocates of a Western Hemisphere anti-narcotics treaty believe it could replace the certification process because all members of the alliance would pledge full cooperation in the war on drugs. To fulfill its mission, however, the treaty would need a strong secretariat with authority to punish countries violating its provisions.

That may prove a bottleneck. The administration proposed the treaty at the first Summit of the Americas in Miami in 1994. The leaders agreed unanimously, but it has been difficult since then to work out details of how to enforce a treaty.

In a report to Congress in September, the State Department acknowledged that persuading other governments to agree on the proposed treaty’s mechanisms remained “a tough sell.” But the administration still hoped to obtain “a comprehensive commitment to implementation” at the Santiago summit in April.