Pubdate: Wed, 25 Oct 2000
Source: Wichita Eagle (KS)
Copyright: 2000 The Wichita Eagle
Contact:  P.O. Box 820, Wichita, KS 67201
Fax: (316) 268-6627
Website: http://www.wichitaeagle.com/
Author: Andres Oppenheimer, Miami Herald

U.S. DRUG WAR BREEDING DISCONTENT

The next U.S. president may have to be more creative to obtain greater 
Latin American cooperation in the war on drugs: One can sense a growing and 
increasingly open regional discontent with current U.S. anti-drug policies. 
Even Argentina, one of the closest U.S. allies in South America, is keeping 
a prudent distance from the $1.3 billion U.S. military package to fight 
drugs in Colombia, and is beginning to criticize publicly what it sees as a 
narrow-minded U.S. focus on drug interdiction and eradication in countries 
such as Colombia, Bolivia and Peru.

At his office last week, Foreign Minister Adalberto Rodriguez Giavarini 
summed up the growing regional frustration by recalling what he saw during 
a recent visit to neighboring Bolivia.

The Argentine foreign minister was planning to congratulate Bolivian 
President Hugo Banzer for his successful U.S.-sponsored coca eradication 
program, which has eliminated more than 90 percent of the country's illegal 
coca crops. Instead, he found Banzer in a devastating political and 
economic crisis, ironically caused by the very success of his antidrug 
plan. A revolt by 35,000 angry coca growers had paralyzed Bolivia, and 
widespread street protests had caused at least 10 deaths and $200 million 
in economic loss. According to Bolivian government estimates, Bolivia has 
lost $700 million in illegal drug income over the past two years. There is 
a near unanimous consensus in Latin America that U.S.-financed programs to 
help coca growers switch to other crops are not providing enough funds to 
help growers make up for their lost income. To make things worse, Europe 
and the United States are making it increasingly difficult for Latin 
American countries to export their legal crops.

In addition to greater efforts to curb drug consumption, the United States 
and Europe should also do more to curb their own exports of chemicals used 
to produce cocaine, he said. These chemicals are being dumped into Amazon 
jungle rivers, creating an ecological damage without precedent in the 
region. At a Sept. 1 summit of South American presidents in Brazil, some 
countries such as Venezuela and Brazil also expressed growing uneasiness 
with U.S. military aid to Colombia, which includes 500 U.S. military 
trainers. My own conclusion: Unless the next U.S. president comes up with 
new antidrug plans with greater responsibilities for drug-consuming 
countries, there will be a growing confrontation over the drug war. And 
even the closest U.S. allies will be on the other side of the fence.
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