Decades After Fleeing Term, Man Headed To Prison MONTREAL - An American prison escapee - who for nearly three decades has led a life of hard work, devoted marriage, and community service in Canada - surrendered yesterday in his home state, pleading to no avail with a New York judge for leniency so that he might care for his cancer-stricken wife. Instead, the 50-year-old physics researcher was ordered to serve more than three years remaining on a prison sentence for selling $20 worth of LSD while he was a university student. [continues 721 words]
Nearly 160 Colombian and Mexican suspected drug traffickers believed to have been operating along the Eastern Seaboard were charged Wednesday with trading vast quantities of cocaine and heroin for green cards from an undercover agent posing as a crooked official of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. More than 100 of the suspects, most of whom lived in New York, were arrested as scores of law enforcement officers fanned out in a series of daybreak raids from New York City to southern Florida. [continues 342 words]
Colombia needs help, not guns Plainclothes men wearing sandals made from old tires and carrying automatic rifles stopped us at a roadblock on a twisting mountain road above Villavicencio, Colombia, one sunny day in 1982. We showed them our papers and they waved us through. I asked my Colombian companion, "What was that about?" She shrugged her shoulders and shook her head, clearly frightened, and I drove on toward Bogota. Three months working on a cattle ranch in Colombia gave me a glimpse of a complex political situation that could become a foreign policy nightmare if Congress approves an emergency proposal to send nearly $1 billion in mostly military aid to Colombia. [continues 550 words]
WHEN the Senate approved the Tonkin Gulf Resolution in 1964, giving President Johnson carte blanche for war in Vietnam, only two senators said no: Wayne Morse and Ernest Gruening. We have made some progress since then. When the Senate voted last week for an open-ended commitment to aid a war against drug cultivation in Colombia, 11 senators dissented by supporting a modest amendment. The lives of American soldiers are not at risk in Colombia - yet. But in other respects the parallels between this adventure and Vietnam are spooky. [continues 617 words]
Diplomats hold meeting in jungle to end violence MEXICO CITY -- Two Canadian diplomats on a peace mission to Colombia's southeastern Amazon jungle expect to meet today with top Marxist rebels in their remote jungle encampment. Guillermo Rishchynski, Canada's ambassador to Colombia, and senior embassy diplomat Nicholas Coghlan are part of a 21-member team of diplomats sitting down with leaders from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) to talk peace - and control the drug trade. Two days of talks will try to find alternatives to "illicit cultivation" of drug crops throughout Colombia's southern Amazon region. The main crops are coca leaves for cocaine and opium poppies for heroin. [continues 542 words]
Drug trade flourishing despite bio-war HERE'S a number that offers telling reasons for voting for Ralph Nader in the fall. Nine Democrats. Not even double digits. Last week, the U.S. Senate finally voted $934 million to wage war in Colombia. The House voted earlier this year to provide $1.7 billion in anti-narcotics aid for Colombia over a two-year period. The Senate bill only covers the first year. So where does the ``nine Democrats'' number figure in this picture? The sum total of puissant legislators who voted for Sen. Paul Wellstone's amendment, which would have taken $225 million from the $934 million and spent it instead on domestic drug treatment programs, consisted of nine Democrats and two Republicans. Here they are: Boxer, D-Calif. (co-sponsor); Grams, R-Minn.; Murray, D-Wash.; Byrd, D-W.Va.; Harkin, D-Iowa; Specter, R-Pa.; Dorgan, D-N.D.; Leahy, D-Vt.; Wellstone, D-Minn.; Feingold, D-Wis.; Mikulski, D-Md. [continues 663 words]
LOS POZOS, Colombia -Washington's escalating drug war in Colombia is expected to come under sharp attack at an international peace conference opening today in this tiny village in the country's coca-growing south. Hosted by leftist guerrillas and the government as part of negotiations to end the Andean country's 36-year conflict, the Conference on Illegal Drug Crops and the Environment will be attended by delegates from 21 countries, including Britain, Spain, France, Canada and Japan - but not the United States. The U.S. government declined, citing a prohibition on official contacts with Colombia's largest rebel band, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. [end]
The Dutch parliament yesterday voted to decriminalise the wholesale trade in cannabis, in a surprise outcome that has wrong-footed the cabinet. A narrow majority backed a motion aimed at removing the anomaly under which licensed "coffee shops" are allowed to hold and sell small quantities of the drug, while their suppliers remain open to prosecution. The move is likely to draw renewed international scrutiny of the Netherlands' liberal drugs policy. Benk Korthals, justice minister, said: "This sends the wrong signal, and is contrary to international treaties." The centre-left cabinet is to discuss the issue on Friday, at its last meeting before the summer recess. But he indicated that he would not draw up legislation to comply with the vote. [continues 192 words]
June 27- Governor Gary Johnson, one of the highest ranking officials, is at it again, calling for drug policy reform. Johnson was talking about drug legalization and normalization at the Drug Policy Forum of Texas Monday. "It shouldn't be criminal to have a drink and do no harm to anyone but yourself, but you know what, if your drink and do harm to someone else, you drink and get in an automobile - you are liable," said Johnson. Johnson has publicly said the nation's drug policies cause more damage than the drugs themselves. Monday was his first public speech on the issue outside of New Mexico since April. [end]
DAVIDSON, N.C.-Between the years 1994 and 1998 the United States went to extremes to isolate the then-president of Colombia, Ernesto Samper, as it suspected him of receiving $ 6 million in campaign contributions from the Cali drug cartel. Yet, the US continued fighting its war on drugs in Colombia by circumventing Mr. Samper's office and working directly with the Colombian National Police and its highly respected commander Gen. Rosso Jos Serrano. Many US officials now admit the isolation of Samper was a mistake because it weakened the Colombian state at the very time both paramilitary and guerrilla groups were gaining strength in the countryside. [continues 1076 words]