Bolivia accepts US aid in coca fight

President Evo Morales rules out return of US agents, but says he will accept $250,000 from Washington for satellite monitoring Bolivia has relaxed its hostility to US involvement in Latin America by accepting help to combat the country’s growing drug trafficking problem. President Evo Morales, an outspoken critic of Washington “imperialism”, has accepted financial aid to monitor efforts to eradicate coca, the raw ingredient for cocaine. The government accepted the $250,000 offer following setbacks to its counter-narcotics programme which prompted calls for a return of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Morales, an Aymara Indian and former coca grower, expelled around 30 DEA agents in 2008, claiming they were plotting against his socialist revolution. The president allowed coca cultivation to expand, arguing the Andean leaf had multiple legitimate uses. As a coca farmer in the 1980s he had been beaten by Bolivian police who tried to enforce the DEA’s campaign against the crop.However, he pledged “zero tolerance” for cocaine, a chemical derivative of coca, and said Bolivia could crack down on traffickers without US help. The effort to rehabilitate coca, considered sacred by the Incas, gained widespread international support but Bolivia’s law-enforcement institutions have struggled against well-funded drug gangs. Authorities said they seized 28 tonnes of cocaine last year, more than neighbouring Peru, but the US and UN said drug trafficking was spiking. In February the government was embarrassed when three senior police officers and the former commander of the counter-narcotics force, Rene Sanabria, were arrested on suspicion of smuggling cocaine to the US. Around 40 other Bolivian officials and agents are facing trafficking charges. Morales has ruled out the DEA’s return but this week the vice-minister of social defence, Felipe Cáceres, said the government would accept $250,000 from Washington for satellite monitoring of manual eradication of illicit coca crops. The deal, expected to be signed this week, was part of a joint initiative with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and Brazil, which will contribute $100,000 to the satellite tracking. The minister stressed that US agents would not be returning. The deal was limited to logistical support and economic assistance and would help make Bolivia’s anti-drug efforts more transparent and quantifiable. “In no way would north American personnel” be involved in interdiction and eradication, he said. Brazil has grown alarmed that more cocaine from Peru and Bolivia is crossing its border and being consumed there, fuelling violence and corruption. Bolivia Evo Morales Drugs trade Drugs Peru Brazil US foreign policy United States Rory Carroll guardian.co.uk

Posted by on April 20, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.