Peruvian Prime Minister Luis Solari said yesterday that he expects the U.S. drug-interdiction flights over Peru, which were stopped in 2001, to resume shortly. "We need, as soon as possible, the resumption of the flights," Mr. Solari told editors and reporters in a luncheon interview at The Washington Times yesterday. "When the flights stop, the price [of cocaine] rises." In Washington to discuss trade, U.S. investment and drug interdiction, Mr. Solari said that he had met with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, several congressmen and President Bush's Latin America envoy, Otto Reich. [continues 449 words]
The United States was voted off the U.N. international drug monitoring agency last week, on the same day it lost its seat in the U.N. Human Rights Commission, U.N. and U.S. officials said yesterday. Both actions caused outrage on Capitol Hill, and legislators vowed retaliation, possibly including a freeze on the payment of almost $600 million in long-postponed U.N. dues. "The United Nations stuck their finger in our eye. There is a danger that the United Nations made a serious mistake here, and there will be consequences," said John Feehrey, spokesman for House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, Illinois Republican. [continues 626 words]
Sen. Jesse Helms plans to make history this month by taking the entire Senate Foreign Relations Committee to Mexico for a joint session with its counterpart committee in the Mexican Congress. "This will be, to the best of my knowledge, the first time in history that a committee of the United States Congress has held a joint meeting on foreign soil with a committee of another nation's Congress or parliament," Mr. Helms, North Carolina Republican, said yesterday in announcing the trip. [continues 425 words]
The White House delivered its annual report card to Congress on drug producing and trafficking nations yesterday, certifying that most nations, including Colombia and Mexico, are "fully cooperating" partners with the United States in the war on drugs. Of the 24 nations under review, only Afghanistan and Burma were "decertified," which makes them ineligible for some development aid and ineligible for support in multilateral lending institutions such as the World Bank. Haiti and Cambodia were decertified but given a waiver for national security reasons, which means that imposing sanctions would cause more harm than good. Despite decertification, countries are still eligible for humanitarian and anti-drug aid. [continues 467 words]
The Organization of American States yesterday released a country-by-country report card on the war against drugs, arguing to an increasingly receptive U.S. government that the multilateral approach is better than the U.S. system in which countries must be certified as allies in the drug war. "This is a totally different process than certification. We are certain that this method of evaluation will have more legitimacy," said OAS Secretary-General Cesar Gaviria. "Almost every country in the hemisphere thinks the unilateral process is inconvenient. This is a method of cooperation." [continues 556 words]
Operation Restore Democracy, a 1994 invasion of Haiti by 20,000 American troops, had another key objective - to stop the flow of U.S.-bound cocaine through what was then becoming a premier Caribbean drug hub. Six years later, drug shipments through Haiti have soared to unprecedented levels, the latest in a series of setbacks to buffet the desperately poor nation that has seen U.S. troops depart and its fledgling democracy wither with a series of fraud-tainted elections. "Haiti is a narco-state, no different than Panama was under [Manuel] Noriega, when the state powers, the banks and the police were either acquiescing or actively participating in narco-trafficking," said one U.S. official, who asked not to be named. [continues 610 words]
Members of Peru's anti-narcotics agency expressed frustration yesterday at their failure to persuade the United States to resume air surveillance of the Andean region, which was halted more than a year ago. The withdrawal of U.S. AWACS and other surveillance aircraft has left air lanes into Colombia virtually open to drug traffickers, hamstringing Peru's ability to halt the trade, said the visitors to Washington for an international anti-drug conference. "All of our success is in jeopardy if we do not get the return of the AWACs and the Orions," said Maria Teresa Hart, counselor at the Peruvian Embassy. [continues 563 words]
