Pubdate: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 Source: Ledger-Enquirer (GA) Copyright: 2002 Ledger-Enquirer Contact: http://www.l-e-o.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/237 Author: ANGUS MACSWAN OFFICIAL: DRUG WAR IN COLOMBIA SET TO INTENSIFY MIAMI - The war against drug traffickers and their guerrilla allies in Colombia will intensify under new President Alvaro Uribe with the full backing of the U.S. government, the top U.S. drug official said on Tuesday. "There's no question President Uribe was elected to bring greater security to Colombia. A part of that is to cut off the drug trade, which is a source for anti-democratic forces," John Walters, director of National Drug Control Policy, said. "We (the United States) have already committed historic levels of support to Colombia and the effort in the hemisphere and we're going to continue that," Walters told Reuters in an interview. "There is a consensus in Colombia and the United States as never before." Uribe, who took office on Aug. 7, has promised to double the number of professional soldiers to 100,000 and add $1 billion to annual defense spending of $3 billion to tackle guerrillas and far-right paramilitary outlaws. Colombia is the third biggest recipient of U.S. aid, including the more than $1.5 billion, most of it military assistance, to fund the anti-drug Plan Colombia. President Bush this month lifted restrictions on the Colombian military using U.S.-supplied helicopters and U.S-trained units against the guerrillas, saying the war against them and the drug lords was the same. Critics of the policy say the United States could become stuck in a quagmire in Colombia, where leftist guerrillas and rightist paramilitaries with links to drugs are fighting a civil war that kills thousands every year. "We're going to see an intensification, and an intensification of the effectiveness of efforts," Walters said. He said he believed the Uribe government understood that to combat the drug trade, reforms in Colombian society, including in education and social welfare as well as protecting human rights and economic development were needed. He also said drug buyers in the United States were "the single biggest funder of anti-democratic forces in the hemisphere" and U.S. law enforcement would focus of reducing domestic demand. Walters was in Miami for a conference of officials from the Americas. He said increased security measures at sea and air ports and along borders since the attacks of Sept. 11 had restricted the smuggling of drugs into the United States. "They've reported drugs backing up in Mexico as a result of tighter border security. Cocaine purity in the United States dropped 11 percent in one year ... we have sporadic information, especially in Mexico, that major organizations are having trouble with cash flow. Colombians are no longer delivering drugs and waiting for the cash to come to them, they want cash on the nail," he said. He also said U.S. drug fighters were troubled by the situation in Peru, where guerrillas and drug gangs are resurgent in some areas. After substantial reductions in coca production, authorities can no longer carry out alternative development programs in some areas because of poor security, he said. Besides trying to get farmers back into coca production, guerrillas were trying to get them to cultivate poppies for heroin production. "It would be terrible to lose the progress that has been made in Peru because we can't work together to provide security to use the alternative development money that's already queued up," he said. Some $40 million dollars in aid was held up. U.S. officials hoped to restart in the fall the CIA programs that had blocked the traffickers' "air bridge" between Peru and Colombia, he said. The program was suspended in 2001 after the Peruvian air force shot down a plane carrying U.S. missionaries. - --- MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart