Pubdate: Tue, 13 Nov 2001
Source: South Florida Sun Sentinel (FL)
Copyright: 2001 Sun-Sentinel Co & South Florida Interactive, Inc
Contact:  http://www.sun-sentinel.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1326
Author: Jose Dante Parra Herrera

COLOMBIAN CHIEF SEES TROPHIES OF DRUG WAR

MIAMI . If it weren't for the labels on the rubbish, it would have seemed 
as if Colombian President Andres Pastrana was touring a junkyard on Monday 
morning.

An airplane engine sat in one corner, a few feet from a sack of pumice rock 
and an iron piling once welded on a ship's deck. All were strewn about a 
U.S. Customs warehouse in the Port of Miami. The objects, once used to 
smuggle drugs into Miami, were now trophies for the federal officials 
showing Pastrana the fruits of their labor fighting drugs on this side of 
the Caribbean.

Pastrana was pleased to learn that many of those seizures did not come from 
his country -- at least not directly. Many of the objects on display were 
from Haitian ships caught in the Miami River, among them roof tiles from 
Venezuela and wooden pallets from Brazil, countries that have become 
transshipment points for Colombian cocaine.

"It seems it has been a long time they caught a shipment from Colombia," 
Pastrana said, referring to his country's successes in clamping down 
shipments headed to the United States.

Pastrana was in Miami on his way to Colombia after shuttling for the past 
five days between Washington and New York, talking about his country's 
ongoing fight with drug trafficking and the violence associated with it. He 
met with President George Bush, key congressional leaders, Attorney General 
John Ashcroft and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Then he headed to the 
United Nations general assembly.

He urged leaders throughout his trip to help him generate jobs and keep 
attacking the drug profits that finance terrorist groups in his country. 
For the past 40 years, Colombia has been involved in guerrilla war between 
leftist rebels, the government and, in the last 10 years, right-wing 
paramilitary guerrillas.

Over the last decade, the conflict has exploded as armed groups such as the 
leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, and the rightist 
United Self Defenses of Colombia, or AUC, began profiting from the drug 
crops that grow in the areas they control.

"Narcotrafficking is the largest financial resource of terrorism," Pastrana 
said, pointing out how Osama bin Laden's group profits from the opium 
trade. "Narcotraffickers, those are the ones who are financing violence in 
my country and abroad."
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