Pubdate: Fri, 24 Sep 1999 Source: Reuters Copyright: 1999 Reuters Limited. BRAZIL TO HUNT DRUG CARTELS WITH PERU BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil and Peru are going to join forces to fight the growing penetration of Peruvian drug cartels across the countries' Amazon jungle border, a senior official said Friday. The announcement came as the arrest this week of a Brazilian lawmaker on allegations he ran a death squad with links to a drug ring in the border state of Acre highlighted rising ties with Brazil's Amazon by regional drug barons. ``Peru is doing an excellent job in eradicating coca crops with crop substitution programmes and that is pushing the drug cartels toward the border region with Brazil,'' Walter Maierovitch, Brazil's drug secretary, told journalists. Brazil's huge size -- it borders with every country in South America except for two -- and vast Amazon basin makes effective frontier controls virtually impossible in remote regions. Brazil's two western-most states -- Acre and Amazonas -- that nestle deep in the jungle, just out from the rest of the country to the borders with Colombia, Peru and Bolivia. Significant programmes in Peru and Bolivia to cut the production of coca leaf, which is used to make cocaine, has increasingly sent drug producers there to find new production areas and routes to U.S. and European buyers. Brazil has become important for the flow of drugs from Colombia as well, as air routes from Colombia to the United States have been effectively stopped. Maierovitch said Acre and Amazonas have become points of entry to Brazil for cocaine paste which is taken to Colombian laboratories to be refined. In some cases, Brazilian Indian tribes with valuable knowledge of the jungles have been recruited by the cartels to carry the drugs, he said. There are three Peruvian cartels -- Cacique Rivera, The Crystal Cartel and the Uncle Rios Cartel -- operating in the border areas, according to the official. Maierovitch will travel to Lima Monday to sign an agreement with Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori which will include exchanging information on drug smuggling and joint border control operations. This week's arrest of Brazilian lawmaker Hildebrando Pascoal on allegations that he controlled a death squad which facilitated drugs smuggling when he was Acre's military policy chief has drawn attention to Brazil's increasing strategic importance for drugs producers. A damning report approved this week by a congressional commission investigating drug running in Acre pointed to a ring of criminals in the state's police as being involved in the drugs trade with bordering countries. The report accused 28 people -- including Pascoal, his brother and two of his cousins -- of being members of an international crime ring. Twenty people mentioned in the report were arrested in Acre Thursday and were due to be flown to jails in capital Brasilia Friday. Pascoal has denied accusations of murder and torture but has admitted he handed out passes allowing people to go through police checkpoints without being searched. - --- MAP posted-by: Jo-D