Source: Reuters PORTAUPRINCE, Haiti (Reuter) American troops in Haiti are helping the U.S. and local Coast Guard fight drug trafficking, military, diplomatic and police sources said. Special forces soldiers are taking part in the operations, according to a senior Western diplomat and a military source familiar with drug interdiction efforts. Such activity goes beyond the official mission of U.S. military personnel in Haiti, which military public affairs officers say is solely to carry out infrastructure and humanitarian projects and training exercises. ``It's clear the U.S. military is involved in going after drug trafficking,'' said a senior Western diplomat. He said he had spoken with U.S. special forces soldiers who told him they were on an antidrug mission in the southern city of Jacmel. ``Ninety percent of U.S. interest in Haiti is drug trafficking and boat people,'' said the diplomat. ``It's clear the military presence in Haiti is not just building roads.'' A U.S. military source, who declined to be identified, also said U.S. Navy Seals have been assisting in drug interdiction in the northern port city of CapHaitien. ``They don't stay in Haiti, they stay on Roosevelt air base,'' in Puerto Rico, the source said. ``It isn't too far to fly in when they are brought in for drug operations.'' Some 20,000 U.S. troops restored Haiti's deposed president JeanBertrand Aristide to power in 1994. The troops withdrew from Haiti in March last year and were replaced by a U.N. peacekeeping mission, although some 500 U.S. troops remain as the U.S. Support Group charged with humanitarian work. Haitian President Rene Preval and officials at the U.S. embassy in PortauPrince declined to confirm or deny for the record whether U.S. forces are taking part in such operations. ``I'm not saying anything about that,'' Preval told Reuters in response to a question earlier this week. A veteran drug smuggler told Reuters that the U.S. military was the only force he was worried about on his regular speedboat runs carrying cocaine. On the roof of a PortauPrince hotel, the speedboat navigator pulled hard on a marijuana joint, relaxing before making his next run, and said he hoped to retire to golden years on the beach in the next few months. The tall old man has been outrunning the U.S. Coast Guard for five years, speeding north to the Bahamas from the northern port cities of PortdePaix and CapHaitien. ``I don't worry too much,'' he said. ``I can pay off the ports and the police. Once I'm making the route, I listen to radio signals to know if I'm being monitored.'' Asked if he had seen U.S. military personnel taking part in drug interdiction efforts, he replied: ``I know they're out there.'' Haiti, with its weak police force, has become a major transshipment point for drugs, the U.S. embassy says. The country is used as a storage, repackaging and brokerage site for cocaine, marijuana and possibly heroine moving from Colombia, Central America and the Dominican Republic to the United States. The U.S. Coast Guard estimates that as much as 30 tonnes of cocaine annually pass through Haiti to the United States. Bales of cocaine are routinely shipped in or dropped from planes into the ocean where they are picked up and loaded onto ships or brought overland to the airport, according to police. PortdePaix Police Chief St. Germain Rubens said he sees drug ships arriving at an island off the coast just outside his window, but that the police are illequiped to stop the trade. ``I see ships come in from Honduras and Colombia,'' he said. ''But our police can search a boat for an entire day and not find the drugs.'' The planes that fly over and the ships that come in to northern ports are now being monitored by U.S. Navy ships in the ocean, the military source said. United Nations police trainers, who also declined to be named, confirmed the U.S. military operations and said they were the result of increasing concern that the Haitian National Police are becoming involved in the lucrative drug trade. ``You bring in the military as an extra means to monitor planes coming in, and then set up an operation,'' one officer said. ``This is due to a question of how high up the Haitian police or government is involved in the trafficking.''