FACTBOX - Impoverished Guinea-Bissau faces drugs trade threat

(Reuters) - Guinea-Bissau's President Joao Bernardo "Nino" Vieira survived an attack by renegade soldiers on his home early on Sunday, one week after parliamentary elections were held in the poor, volatile West African state.

The country has lurched from one political crisis to another since independence from Portugal in 1974.

In recent years, the increasing activities in Guinea-Bissau of Latin American cocaine-trafficking cartels have raised the risks of more instability there, U.N. officials say.

Here are some key facts about Guinea-Bissau:

* THE THREAT:

-- Guinea-Bissau, a tiny former Portuguese colony on the tip of West Africa, has become a major hub in the flow of cocaine from Latin America to Europe as traffickers have taken advantage of a jagged coastline and a weak state mired in constant crises.

-- Drugs are transported across the Atlantic by light aircraft or boats and then re-directed by plane or boat or on land on the next leg of their journey north to Europe.

-- Narcotics experts have said some members of the military have facilitated the trade by guaranteeing safe passage for planes and boats ferrying millions of dollars worth of drugs.

* THE ECONOMY: