Posted on 01/23/2008 6:00:10 AM PST by 3AngelaD
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...
"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."...
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Hmmm... that has a familiar sound to it. But where....? Oh well, Pizza anyone?
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