Colombia’s defense minister said Tuesday that the United States approved the South American country’s strategy to curb cocaine trafficking Washington is now criticizing.
Defense Minister Luis Carlos Villegas responded to a DEA report that implied that a recent increase in cocaine use was due to an increase in coca cultivation in Colombia.
US President Donald Trump had earlier threatened to decertify Colombia as a partner in the so-called War on Drugs if it failed to control coca cultivation.
Colombia coca cultivation likely to increase in 2017: DEA
According to the minister, the planning and execution of the policy has been in full coordination with the United States and the United Nations.
So we both were wrong, the United States and us. Either we are wrong or someone else is wrong different from us, because these strategies have all been linked with strategic planning and support of the international community, especially the United States.
Defense Minister Luis Carlos Villegas
The two countries are traditional allies and have long combated drug trafficking and leftist guerrillas together.
The DEA implied that a peace process with the FARC rebel group had stimulated cocaine production.
The peace process seeks to end more than half a century of armed conflict.
The agreement with the FARC includes a UN-supported program to substitute coca cultivation. This program is allegedly out of funds.
The US-supported forced eradication is causing deadly violence and increased social unrest in the countryside where the guerrillas’ rule long was law.
Villegas, a former ambassador to Washington DC, urged “increased interdiction efforts on behalf of the United States in the Pacific and to avoid the final consumption on that country’s market.”
The US is the largest of a number of major importers of illegal Colombian cocaine. The DEA said most of this cocaine traveled through the Pacific.
The defense minister went as far as dismissing the United States’ estimate Colombia was growing a record 188,000 hectares of coca in 2016.
When speaking of hectares in Colombia, the official source is provided by the United Nations through the Information and Monitoring System on Illicit Crops (SIMCI) and they say that they are just over 140,000 hectares.
Defense Minister Luis Carlos Villegas
The Colombian government, the FARC and the Colombian government have negotiated during the peace talks that ended months before former President Barack Obama left office.
These negotiations presumably included drug trafficking, one of the US’ major concerns in the region and a revenue generator for the FARC until the guerrillas became a political party.
President Donald Trump, however, has showed little interest in made agreements, spurring Colombia’s foreign minister to claim “anything could happen” to the countries’ bilateral relations.
The Colombian president has repeatedly called on the international community to consider different policies, including ones that legalize and regulate drugs.
