Dominican Republic sees surge in drug smuggling

KEY WEST, Florida (Reuters) - Drug smugglers are flying with impunity into the Dominican Republic and have turned it into a far more important transshipment point for South American cocaine than its largely lawless and impoverished neighbor, Haiti, U.S. officials said on Thursday.

"This country has lost the control of its airspace," Lt. Col. James Love of the U.S. Joint Interagency Task Force South in Key West told Reuters in an interview.

Cocaine-laden flights from Venezuela, in particular, are soaring as the Dominican Republic becomes the main Caribbean transit route for drugs to the United States, the officials said.

It takes about only seven hours for a single-engine Cessna to take off from Venezuela, drop its tightly packed bales of cocaine onto Dominican soil from the air, and return to Venezuela for another load.

The Joint Interagency Task Force, where Love serves as director of planning and policy, tracks drug trafficking through the Caribbean and Central and South America.

A recent U.S. State Department report said the Dominican Republic and Haiti, which share the island of Hispaniola, both saw a 38 percent increase in drug smuggling flights last year.

That followed a 167 percent surge in flights to the Caribbean island from Venezuela in 2006, the report said.

The Dominican Republic -- far wealthier and more stable than its neighbor -- is now getting the lion's share of the business.

In 2005, when Love and other officials say Hispaniola first started grabbing U.S. attention as a narcotics transit point, there were 26 suspected cocaine flights into Haiti and 33 to the Dominican Republic.

By last year, suspected drug flights into Haiti totaled just 18, while the number to its neighbor jumped to 107.

'EASIER, CHEAPER'

"The drug traffickers are having trouble doing business in Haiti," said Lt. Col. James Patterson, an aide to Love, when asked why the smuggling business had shifted in favor of one country over another.

"It's easier, it's cheaper," he added, saying there were any number of reasons why traffickers might prefer doing business in one country over another.

In its report in March, the State Department said both Haiti and the Dominican Republic suffered from the corrosive effects of corruption and weak government institutions.

But one U.S. counternarcotics official, speaking on background, said the notorious lawlessness in Haiti was bad for business of all kinds, including the drug trade.

"It's not a very stable environment to do business in," the official said.

Adding to its relative attractions, the Dominican Republic is a hub for international shipping and sits across the Mona Passage from the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico -- an easy springboard for shipments to the U.S. mainland.

"At some point, there's got to be a peak here," said Patterson, when asked about possible limits to the Dominican Republic's expanding role in the drug trade.

"At some point, they're going to go somewhere else," he said of the smugglers.

(Editing by Michael Christie and Peter Cooney)