EU highlights Andean drug enforcement efforts

Lima, March 29th. The European Union (EU) highlighted the "drug enforcement efforts made by Andean countries", the results of which UE representative Elza Pais qualified as "notable" during the inauguration of the IV High Level Meeting on Drugs between the UE and the Andean Community (CAN).

This meeting, held from March 29th to 30th at the CAN headquarters, was attended by representatives of Germany, Austria, Spain, Italy and Portugal, as well as of member countries of the Andean Community – Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela.

Pais, Co-Chairman of the meeting on Europe’s behalf, maintained that the "EU was placing more priority on drug enforcement". She referred to the overall global EU strategy for the 2000 – 2004 period that the European Council adopted in Helsinki in December 1999 and stated that cooperation with Latin America had acquired a new dimension when the Global Action Plan on Drugs for the EU/Latin America/Caribbean was adopted at the 1999 Rio Summit.

"Putting this action plan into operation was one of the tasks assumed by the EU under the Portuguese chairmanship, and this has to be the context of today’s meeting" she stated, after thanking the representatives of the Andean Community for their "high class contribution" to the Plan and stressing Peru’s successful eradication of coca plantations.

General Ibsen del Castillo, Peruvian government spokesman and Co-Chairman of the meeting on behalf of Andean countries, stated that the complex nature of the problem involving the production, illegal trafficking and consumption of drugs had prompted the Andean Community and the European Union to review their inter-state co-operation schemes.

He stressed that "shared responsibility" is a guiding principle for countries involved in drug enforcement and "under this principle, drugs are considered a shared problem threatening all countries".

He mentioned that both regions are well aware that every aspect of the drugs problem needs to be faced and that isolated or unilateral responses are not viable. "Proof of this is the ever-increasing presence of European co-operation in alternative development, prevention and other projects", he explained.

Del Castillo referred to Peru’s drug enforcement experience, as a result of which the area covered by coca plantations was reduced by about 66% between 1995 and 1999.

Cultivation, production and alternative development experiences in Bolivia, Colombia and Peru, and legal and police cooperation would be analyzed at the IV High Level Meeting on Drugs between the EU and CAN, at which reports on the control of precursor drugs, money laundering and other matters will be read.