Pubdate: Thu, 29 Aug 2002
Source: Ledger-Enquirer (GA)
Copyright: 2002 Ledger-Enquirer
Contact:  http://www.l-e-o.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/237
Author: ANGUS MACSWAN

OFFICIAL: DRUG WAR IN COLOMBIA SET TO INTENSIFY

MIAMI - The war against drug traffickers and their guerrilla allies in 
Colombia will intensify under new President Alvaro Uribe with the full 
backing of the U.S. government, the top U.S. drug official said on Tuesday.

"There's no question President Uribe was elected to bring greater security 
to Colombia. A part of that is to cut off the drug trade, which is a source 
for anti-democratic forces," John Walters, director of National Drug 
Control Policy, said.

"We (the United States) have already committed historic levels of support 
to Colombia and the effort in the hemisphere and we're going to continue 
that," Walters told Reuters in an interview. "There is a consensus in 
Colombia and the United States as never before."

Uribe, who took office on Aug. 7, has promised to double the number of 
professional soldiers to 100,000 and add $1 billion to annual defense 
spending of $3 billion to tackle guerrillas and far-right paramilitary outlaws.

Colombia is the third biggest recipient of U.S. aid, including the more 
than $1.5 billion, most of it military assistance, to fund the anti-drug 
Plan Colombia.

President Bush this month lifted restrictions on the Colombian military 
using U.S.-supplied helicopters and U.S-trained units against the 
guerrillas, saying the war against them and the drug lords was the same.

Critics of the policy say the United States could become stuck in a 
quagmire in Colombia, where leftist guerrillas and rightist paramilitaries 
with links to drugs are fighting a civil war that kills thousands every year.

"We're going to see an intensification, and an intensification of the 
effectiveness of efforts," Walters said.

He said he believed the Uribe government understood that to combat the drug 
trade, reforms in Colombian society, including in education and social 
welfare as well as protecting human rights and economic development were 
needed.

He also said drug buyers in the United States were "the single biggest 
funder of anti-democratic forces in the hemisphere" and U.S. law 
enforcement would focus of reducing domestic demand.

Walters was in Miami for a conference of officials from the Americas. He 
said increased security measures at sea and air ports and along borders 
since the attacks of Sept. 11 had restricted the smuggling of drugs into 
the United States.

"They've reported drugs backing up in Mexico as a result of tighter border 
security. Cocaine purity in the United States dropped 11 percent in one 
year ... we have sporadic information, especially in Mexico, that major 
organizations are having trouble with cash flow. Colombians are no longer 
delivering drugs and waiting for the cash to come to them, they want cash 
on the nail," he said.

He also said U.S. drug fighters were troubled by the situation in Peru, 
where guerrillas and drug gangs are resurgent in some areas. After 
substantial reductions in coca production, authorities can no longer carry 
out alternative development programs in some areas because of poor 
security, he said. Besides trying to get farmers back into coca production, 
guerrillas were trying to get them to cultivate poppies for heroin production.

"It would be terrible to lose the progress that has been made in Peru 
because we can't work together to provide security to use the alternative 
development money that's already queued up," he said. Some $40 million 
dollars in aid was held up.

U.S. officials hoped to restart in the fall the CIA programs that had 
blocked the traffickers' "air bridge" between Peru and Colombia, he said. 
The program was suspended in 2001 after the Peruvian air force shot down a 
plane carrying U.S. missionaries.
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MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart