Source: Reuters Pubdate: Wed, 22 Oct 1997 Venezuela in drug war but sovereignty comes first CARACAS (Reuters) Venezuela welcomes outside help in the fight against drug trafficking but will not relinquish its sovereignty, a top government official said. Drugs Minister Carlos Tablante told Reuters the international drug trade was increasingly using Venezuela as a smuggling route and that ``we need to have our alarm on.'' But, in an interview late Tuesday, he said Venezuela would jealously prevent ``any foreign police forces to operate on our territory, in our airspace.'' He said Western countries, including the United States, Britain, France and the Netherlands were providing vital intelligence help to the recentlycreated National AntiDrugs Commission (CNA) that he heads. But he strongly opposed any deployment of U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents throughout Venezuela, ''any expansion of the DEA office here or the opening of another DEA office in (Venezuela's second city) Maracaibo, as it has been reported.'' Because Venezuela was next door to Colombia, the world's biggest producer of narcotics, Tablante said it was ``bound to be used as a transit route for drugs'' to the main consuming markets, the United States and Europe. CNA figures show that more than nine tons of cocaine and nearly three tons of marijuana were seized in Venezuela during the first nine months of this year. No comparative figures for 1996 were available but foreign experts estimated that more than five tons of cocaine were seized in Venezuela last year. Western experts and diplomats say up to 240 tons of cocaine are shipped through Venezuela each year. They say Venezuelan authorities only recently started to seriously address the issue but that the CNA's creation this year albeit with limited financial means was a move in the right direction. Tablante, who received U.S. drug czar Barry McCaffrey last week during President Clinton's visit to Caracas, said the United States would be well advised to clamp down harder on drug traffickers within its own borders. ``The biggest drug cartels are not in Colombia, Mexico or in Venezuela, they are in the United States,'' he said. He noted that today's drug lords were sophisticated businessmen using high technology in the world's main financial centers and none of those were in Venezuela. He estimated drug trafficking to be an annual market of $300 billion. Copyright 1997 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.