Pubdate: Fri, 07 Sep 2001
Source: Financial Times (UK)
Section: The Americas, Page 12
Copyright: The Financial Times Limited 2001
Contact:  http://www.ft.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/154
Author: James Wilson

COLOMBIA CALLS FOR DRUGS SUMMIT

BOGOTA   Andres Pastrana, Colombia's president, yesterday called on his US 
counterpart George W. Bush to host an international summit to re- examine 
world drugs policy.

Mr Pastrana's government is implementing controversial and expensive 
US-aided efforts to curb drug supply, including aerial herbicide spraying 
of more than 65,000 hectares of drug-producing crops this year.  But Mr 
Pastrana insisted that demand for drugs was the problem facing 
anti-narcotics efforts.

"If there is no control over demand we can't do anything," he said. "The 
moment has arrived to evaluate world policy against drugs."

Mr Pastrana said Mr Bush should host a world summit to study the 
"successes, failures and errors" of the past decade of world counter- 
narcotics efforts. Similar meetings involving the US, Mexico and South 
American drug-producing nations were held in Colombia and the US in 1990 
and 1992, and were attended by Mr Bush's father, then US president.

In recent weeks calls have grown within Colombia for a rethink on 
counter-narcotics strategy. They have included demands for legalisation of 
the international drugs trade. Supporters of legalisation believe 
prohibition of drugs creates big profits that sustain Colombia's 
long-running conflict and undermine Mr Pastrana's efforts to bring peace.

The 1990 drugs summit in Cartagena gave rise to the Andean Trade 
Preferences Act (Atpa), a US initiative to help drug-producing countries 
improve their economies by granting tariff-free access to US markets for 
most products.

But Atpa is due to expire this year and Mr Pastrana said he would continue 
pushing the US, whose secretary of state, Colin Powell, is to visit 
Colombia next week, to widen trade preferences.
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MAP posted-by: Beth