By Estrella Gutiérrez
CARACAS, Feb 3 1997 (IPS)

Venezuela launched a massive new campaign this week to stem the growing menace of drug trafficking and associated criminal activities.

The government’s anti-drug Czar Carlos Tablante, President of the National Anti Drug Commission (CNA), said the programme – entitled “Venezuela, the Anti-drug Territory: a Life Commitment” sought to combat drug production, trafficking, consumption and money-laundering activities.

The role of the 42-year-old socialist leader gives him ministerial status in recognition of the fact that drug-related crimes have reached alarming proportions in Venezuala.

Tablante told reporters last week that Venezuala’s geographical situation, being next door to Colombia – the world’s largest producer of drugs – put it on the the direct route to the world’s largest consumer of drugs, the United States.

Venezuela has become increasingly important as a location for drug trafficking and other related illicit activities and “Our battle will be to dismantle criminal “networks” throughout the country, Tablante said.

He explained that among the immediate objectives of the plan was the total eradiction of coca and poppy plantations in the Sierra de Perija, on the northeastern border with Colombia.

Venezuela is considered a new producer of drugs, with 280 hectares dedicated to their production in the country’s inhospitable mountainous regions. Eradication will be overseen by a special command of the Armed Forces, starting in the next few days.

In 1995, the government mounted an effort to eliminate poppy plantings but the effort produced a diplomatic skirmish with Colombia as the families affected by the campaign were peasant farmers living in a national park, and whose rights were not respected.

“We have already completed all the necessary steps for the departure of those operating there,” Tablante said. “It is important to send a signal to the world that we will vigorously oppose anyone in our territory attempting to cultivate drugs.”

Tablante said that Venezuela would have to face the consequences if it failed to eliminate the problem and wwound up like Colombia where the Association of Farmers says millions of hectares of cultivatable land are in the hands of narcotraffickers.

Tablante said that drug seizures carried out in Europe and in the United States from ships passing through here had netted between 100 and 300 tons of cocaine a year, which gives an indication of the dimension of the current problem.

Tablante’s numbers came from the U.S. State Department, because one of the serious problems of his department is “there are no reliable statistics.” It was also estimated is that for every one kilogram seized, 100 kilograms went undetected.

The Venezualan National Guard, which carries out police functions and is responsible for anti-drug operations here, has indicted that it captured some 30 tons of drugs in the last five years.

Tablante admitted that the role of Venezuela as a drug- trafficker is growing with rise of this type of crime around the world, fed by corruption and the impunity with which the traffickers operate as they trade their merchandise.

But also a significant measure of responsibility belonged to the United States through whose maritime, land and air borders only minimum quantities were detected while consumption increased and the size of drug related business there continued to grow.

As to money laundering, Tablante said the battle will be waged with banks in general and in border areas, in particular. He explained that laws already on the books have not been used to control the money laundering tied to drug trafficking.

In one border state of Tachira, for example, there were 103 money changing agencies, only one of which was legal, he pointed out.

Furthermore, local security and defense laws mean that no foreigner may acquire properties located up to 20 miles from the border, but hundreds of such private properties exist, farms and businesses, owned by Colombian citizens.

“These are examples of carelessness that the State recognizes and must correct through actions on the local and national level, under the coordination of the CNA,” Tablante said.

The minister explained that the lack of real coordination or agency to assume the key role in the anti-drug struggle, allowed for a mishandling of the anti-drug effort.

He cited, for an example, that over the last three years it was believed that money laundering used real estate as its cover, but further investigation has shown that far from showing growth as expected, this sector has been stagnant during this time.

Tablante believed that a fertile area for money laundering was illegal gambling, a “business’ that moves some 420 million dollars every day.

The new anti-drugs campaign will make use of all the resources available under the law against illicit substances, and partially modify this law to speed up the prosecution of suspects in drug selling, including the confiscation of their properties, he said.

By law, these expropriations can be used to fund the anti-drug campaign as the CNA budget was less than one million dollars for 1997. Tablante said that some 2.2 million dollars will be earned from the sale of these expropriated properties.

On the problem of consumption, he said that they also lacked reliable statistics but there is some evidence of an exponential increase in the drug phenomenon, spurred by the rise in narcotraffic and the deteriorating socioeconomic picture in the country.

The minister stressed that narcotraffic is a crime “without a country, and without ideology,” that must be confronted by a coordinated international strategy.

However he rejected the idea that the United States wields ultimate power in its ability to certify or decertify other countries as making determined efforts against the illegal drug trade. “Who certifies the United States?” he asked rhetorically.

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