BY JUAN O. TAMAYO

                      Cuba said Monday it had deported an accused American drug trafficker and could deport a Colombian smuggler
                      wanted by the United States as a challenge to Washington to step up cooperation on narcotics interdiction with the
                      island.

                      ''The U.S. government now has the chance to show that it is really ready to undertake the fight against these
                      grave scourges of humanity with seriousness and without double standards,'' a Foreign Ministry statement read.

                      U.S. officials said the offer was part of a Cuban campaign to erode U.S. sanctions by painting the communist
                      government as a potential partner in the U.S war on drugs and a profitable market for U.S. exports.

                      In recent years, Cuba has deported 5 to 10 U.S. citizens wanted for crimes such as drug trafficking, child
                      molesting and robbery, U.S. officials said. But it has refused to deport about 70 others wanted for crimes that
                      Cuba considers political.

                      ''They tend to send back the kind of people that neither they nor us like very much,'' said one State Department
                      official with long experience in Cuban affairs.

                      The Foreign Ministry statement said Jesse James Bell, wanted on 15 U.S drug-related charges, was deported to
                      the United States on Jan. 12. Bell was not further identified, but Cuban officials said he was from North Carolina.

                      U.S. officials said the Cubans arrested Bell on migration violations last fall and notified Washington. A check of
                      records revealed he was wanted on drug charges, and the State Department asked Cuba to deport him. A U.S.
                      government aircraft flew to Cuba to pick up Bell, they said.

                      The Cuban statement said police also detained Rafael Miguel Bustamante Bolaños, wanted on drug charges in the
                      United States and his native Colombia, on March 6 for using a false Venezuelan passport to enter the island.

                      Cuba has long argued that its location astride key Caribbean drug-smuggling routes could make it a key U.S. ally
                      in narcotics interdictions operations -- but that it needs foreign technological resources and expertise.

                      Barry McCaffrey, a former U.S. drug policy chief, said after a visit to Havana on March 3 that Cuba was ''an island
                      of resistance'' to the drug smugglers and recommended U.S. officials work more closely with Cuban
                      counternarcotics programs.