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Sierra Leone has made its biggest catch of cocaine after it seized 700kg of the drug on a plane which land- ed at Lungi international air- port, a senior official said. Impoverished west Africa, with its unguarded coastline and sparsely popu- lated interior, has become an important trafficking route for Latin American drug runners into lucrative European markets. "It's the biggest catch ever, we weighed the stuff and it is about 700 kilo- grams," crime services assis- tant Inspector General Francis Munu said. "It's worth around $US35 million in street value in New York, accord- ing to a UNODC estimate,"

Mr Munu said, referring to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Mr Munu also said that the police found five auto- matic rifles and 350 rounds of ammunition on the plane. Information Minister Ibrahim Kargbo said both members of the plane's crew had fled. "It is not yet clear whether they were merely making a transition for fuel or whether they came to land and make a deposit," he said. Cocaine smuggling is the single biggest threat to Sierra Leone in the next five to 10 years, a senior security source told reporters last month. Colombian cocaine car- tels started shipping the drug through west Africa a few years ago because their direct routes to US and European markets were being blocked by anti-nar- cotics agencies.

UNODC executive director Antonio Maria Costa urged the international community earlier this week to act quickly to stop power- ful drug-trafficking cartels taking over ancient trading routes in west Africa and the Sahel. Cocaine use is on the rise in Europe, according to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, which said in its latest annual report that at least 4.5 million Europeans used cocaine in 2006, up from 3.5 million in 2005.

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