Embassy Row

Venezuela and drugs

Venezuela is a “trampoline” in the international drug trade, with Marxist rebels in neighboring Colombia smuggling cocaine over the border to the Caribbean and West Africa and importing black market arms, a top U.S. official said yesterday.

The Bush administration has no evidence that Venezuela’s anti-American president, Hugo Chavez, sanctioned the illegal trade but is disappointed that he refuses to cooperate with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe in the struggle against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Thomas Shannon, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, told reporters at the Foreign Press Center.

“It’s evident that, for a variety of reasons, Venezuela is being used as kind of a trampoline to move drugs, especially by air, out of Colombia and into the Caribbean and into West Africa,” he said.

The U.S.-backed narcotics interdiction program in Colombia and in Brazil has forced drug lords to abandon long-distance flights and to rely on transportation by river or by short flights into western Venezuela where corrupt local officials facilitate the international leg of the drug smuggling, he said.

The route into West Africa feeds the illegal drug trade in Europe.

“There’s been lots of contraband back and forth across that frontier [along the Colombia-Venezuela border], not only in terms of precursor chemicals but also drugs, weapons and ammunitions,” he added.

“And the only way that any control is going to be had over those borders is if Venezuela and Colombia cooperate, and this is what we hope for and this is what we’d like to work towards.”

Mr. Shannon noted that the Bush administration “at this point in time” has no evidence that the drug trade “is the result of a policy by the Venezuelan government.”

Colombia has criticized Mr. Chavez for supporting FARC and interfering in its domestic affairs. Mr. Chavez last week called FARC legitimate rebels with a political agenda and urged foreign governments to stop calling them terrorists.

The United States and the European Union have placed FARC on their terrorist black lists, and the EU yesterday rejected Mr. Chavez’s appeal to remove them from the list.

Chess, not checkers

Mexican Ambassador Arturo Sarukhan criticized U.S. presidential candidates for making “immigrant-bashing” a “wedge issue” and called on Mexico and the United States to turn their relationship toward broader, strategic issues.

“The challenge at the end of the day is whether Mexico and the U.S. are able and willing to play chess instead of checkers,” the ambassador said in a message posted on the Mexican Embassy’s Web site (https://portal.sre.gob. mx/usa).

He bemoaned the current state of U.S.-Mexico relations, noting that his country “is not among the top-tier foreign policy priorities in the minds of most Americans.”

Mr. Sarukhan complained that a “small but vocal group” of Americans see Mexico as a “threat to the security and well-being of the U.S.”

Although both Democratic and Republican presidential candidates have denounced illegal immigration, Mr. Sarukhan spun the debate into one of opposition to all immigration.

“Elections are generally not best suited to constructively tackle foreign policy issues, and this year’s election is no exception,” he said.

Immigration has become “a wedge issue in the primaries” and “immigration- bashing and challenging the effectiveness of free and fair trade in fostering greater economic and social well-being have become all too easy tools in scoring political points in some sectors of American politics …,” he said.

• Call Embassy Row at 202/636-3297, fax 202/832-7278 or e-mail jmorrison@ washingtontimes.com.