Excerpt from State Department briefing on annual narcotics certification decisions, February 25, 2002

Excerpt from State Department briefing on annual narcotics certification decisions, February 25, 2002

The President's 2001 Narcotics Certification Determinations

Rand Beers, Assistant Secretary for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs; Robert Brown, Acting Deputy Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, Office of Supply Reduction
Briefing to the Press
Washington, DC
February 25, 2002

...

QUESTION: Two quick questions. One, could you just update us on just the raw numbers from Colombia in terms of coca and poppy, and how much is coming into the United States after another year of our program there?

And second, if you could give us a few more details on where you think potentially the trouble areas would be in Afghanistan and what sorts of more specific steps you would like the Interim Authority to take at this point.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: With respect to Colombia, the data that we have at this particular point is over a year old. It's still about 135-136,000 hectares of coca under cultivation in Colombia. Over the course of the last year, we sprayed about 85,000 hectares of that coca. Some of it will have been replanted. We know that for a fact. Some of the spraying that we have, in fact, done this year has gone back to areas that have been replanted in the Putumayo region.

With respect to the overall effort, we are still in the process of delivering the full scale of assistance that was provided by Plan Colombia. That is because the time between the purchase and the delivery and the actual ability of the Colombians to use that takes some period of time. The first helicopters have been delivered, the second are there but are in training, and the third are just beginning to be delivered.

But the overall efforts of Colombian police and military, I think have been significant. In addition, the law enforcement cooperation between ourselves and Colombia is superior. The number of people that were extradited from Colombia on US cases is an outstanding number, and that effort continues apace with the Government of Colombia being fully willing to extradite their nationals who have been found to be indictable in the United States for drug charges here.

...

QUESTION: The Attorney General of Mexico this past weekend -- he announced that the body of supposed to be Ramon Arellano-Felix was cremated by members of his family. I wondered if you can comment on that.

And the second question is, on the narcotics issue, from South America through Mexico to the United States, in the last three or four months, there have been reports of an increase of almost 10 percent of cocaine traffic from Colombia through Mexico. And obviously the decision of the President doesn't mention anything on Mexico; everything is fine with Mexico.

So my question to you is whose fault that -- or who's not doing the right work in the border to control the drugs? There is an increase of 10 percent in the last three months.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: With respect to the reports of the death of the drug kingpin, I'm going to have to let the Mexican reports stand for themselves. I don't have any additional information to offer you on that particular set of statements by the Mexican Government. That is essentially what we know.

With respect to the drug flow out of Colombia toward the United States, while you may be in possession of reports of this increase, this is a great science for which Mr. Brown's office is responsible within the US Government, and I'm not in a position at this point in time to even confirm the increase of 10 percent.

But let me simply go to the heart of your question, which is why Mexico was not mentioned in this particular report. And the answer is that the Government of Mexico has taken demonstrable efforts of a significant amount to deal with drug trafficking and, as a result, there is no need to mention Mexico. If you simply look at the record of the Fox Administration since they have come to office, you will see a string of arrests and seizures and eradication that, as a whole, represent a very significant effort on the part of the Mexican Government. And the question about whether or not we might consider decertifying them should even arise, it seems to me, doesn't take into account the reports that have occurred over the last year.

...

QUESTION: The government is apparently embarking on a shift in Colombia from counter-narcotics to counter-terrorism, with a greater release of intelligence and other issues that it's considering. How does this affect the drug policy in Colombia?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: It's no secret that the Government of the United States is considering these issues. It should not diminish the effort. It might enhance the counter-narcotics effort insofar as it drew the FARC away from their involvement in drug trafficking.

QUESTION: In any way are you concerned at all that it might dilute the attempts to counter-narcotic activity in Colombia?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: All of these issues are matters of degree, but at this particular point in time I'm not in a position to tell you that it will. It doesn't yet appear to me to be a tradeoff problem between the counter-narcotics effort and the efforts of the Colombia Government at this point in time; for example, to reoccupy the former despeje.

QUESTION: You think it might help your activity there?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: There are certainly drug trafficking that's going on in the despeje. We have for several years noted the amount of cultivation there. We would also see a number of processing laboratories that exist there as well, and the government reoccupation puts those activities at threat, and hopefully will end them.

QUESTION: Have interdiction flights resumed over Peru?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: No.

QUESTION: Have they increased over Colombia?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: You mean have the drug traffickers increased over Colombia?

QUESTION: Well, have the number of flights that is being run by the Colombians and the US, have those numbers increased?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: The United States suspended its air interdiction effort over both Peru and Colombia immediately after the tragic shooting down of the missionary aircraft last April. They have not resumed.

QUESTION: But to the question you posed, have the drug traffickers increased their flights?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: We have no clear evidence of our own. Both the Government of Peru and Colombia have told us that their information is that those flights have increased. We have not had evidence provided by them that would allow us to reach the same conclusion.

But I hasten to add we recognize that our ability to see what is going on is limited by the fact that we are not flying in those airspaces.

QUESTION: Is a resumption contemplated?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: As the Secretary of State said, we are looking seriously at reopening those flights, but that would require a number of activities to occur first. This government has not yet taken a decision formally to renew. If we were to take that decision, we would have to go back to the governments of both Colombia and Peru, and seek assurances again that the procedures that would provide safety to innocent aircraft would in fact be adhered to. We would have to consult with the Congress, and then we would have to digest all of that information before the President of the United States would ever be asked to formally decide to reinitiate those kinds of flights.

QUESTION: Have the US spoken with Colombian authorities about eradication program in San Vicente del Caguan?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: Yes.

QUESTION: What did you speak with them?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: They said that they were interested in starting this up as soon as they could marshal the resources to do so. We said we would support them.

QUESTION: Can you tell us more details about which will be the operation in this area, which was taken by the Government of Colombia?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: I'm not going to comment on operational details by the Government of Colombia. This is an area of exceeding danger at this particular point in time. The Colombian Government will undertake those actions when it's ready, in the way that it's planning on doing it.

QUESTION: But (inaudible) saying that the US Government and Colombian Government started already an operation in San Vicente del Caguan. Can I say that? Are you --

ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: You'll have to ask the Government of Colombia.

QUESTION: It's a follow-up to my question. The number I gave to you, it was given to us by the DEA agents. And my question is, you haven't detected an increase on the flow of drugs from South America through Mexico in the last couple of months? Because I remember, even some members of the White House have said there has been an increase in the flow of drugs from South America to the United States in the last couple of months. So you say not?

MR. BROWN: No was the answer. But let me give you a little bit more detail on the drug flow itself. In general, we assess, as of calendar 2000, the production capacity, just speaking of cocaine, in the Andean countries, principally in Colombia, to be something like 770 metric tons per year. And the flow of those drugs, some 500-and-some tons, probably is headed towards the United States. About two-thirds of that goes through what we call the Mexico-Central America corridor. That's either through the Pacific or up through the Western Caribbean, or some land movement up through Central American into Mexico.

Those general numbers, two-thirds and one-third through the Caribbean to the East on various avenues, generally remain as they have in the past. The United States consumption of cocaine, perhaps underneath the numbers that I mentioned briefly before, has declined substantially, and in the last 20 years or so, and in the last decade, the decade of the '90s, it's slowly continuing to decline.

Where we have seen large seizures in the recent past have been in the Eastern Pacific. We've seen them in the last two weeks time. You see very large seizures, multi-ton seizures there. Somebody might relate those to spikes of 10 percent or even more. But, in fact, those seizures are still reflective of that general trend of two-thirds and one-third; Mexico, Central America and Caribbean.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: We compile this on a quarterly basis. We are still in the first quarter. We won't have those figures for another couple of months, but to speculate on individual or even monthly time frames, as reflective of major trends, is not the way that we make that analysis. We do it on a quarterly basis and an annual basis so that we can give you the clearest trend line picture, and not perturbations that may spike up or down.

QUESTION: I'm trying to go over the figures, the production figures in Colombia -- the hectarage, rather. You said there are 135-136,000 hectares planted and you sprayed 85,000. How effective was that spraying, in your assessment? And what effect did it have on the supply, and therefore on the price, of cocaine? Has there been any effect at all? It seems extraordinary that you should spray 85,000, which is about 70 percent of the total, without having any effect. Could you explain this?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: I'm not in a position to indicate that there has been at this point in time an effect on price and availability in the United States. One of the things we don't know, just as with respect to Afghanistan, is what the size of the overall stockpiles might be in any locations in Colombia or along the supply chain to the United States. So that you would see that effect translate immediately is something that we don't know precisely and which I would expect not to show up.

Secondly, when we spray an area, it is possible to replant it and to have a harvestable product within nine months of the time of the replanting. We expect that in the first instance of a spraying in an area, that farmers may believe that they will not be touched again and that they may replant. We know that to be the case, specifically in the area of Putumayo, as I mentioned earlier, where farmers seem to have made the judgment that by signing up as part of the alternative development program, they were permitted to grow coca.

And even though they had been sprayed, that in fact was not the way the pacts were written. The pacts were written that if you had coca that was growing, it would not be sprayed, but if you didn't have coca, or if it had just been eradicated, you couldn't replant. So some of the effort that we have undertaken in Putumayo over the course of the last two months has been to make clear to the campesinos there that that was not what the pact actually says, and we sprayed 19,000 hectares, of which probably 50 percent was directed at farmers who did replant from the earlier eradication effort.

Our assumption has been that the replanting potential is 60 to 80 percent after the first eradication. And that is why it is necessary to spray and to continue to spray in order to make clear that the government's policy is that coca cultivation is unacceptable. And in that fashion, to create one of the bases for alternative development programs to have a chance to take hold in coca growing areas.

QUESTION: Following up on that point, I've just been a little confused. Can you point, in the last year, to the tangible difference in the amount of coca that's grown or the flow into this country? Do you have or do you now have that information? I just -- what is the data that you don't have because you're not doing the interdiction flights, but can you show progress because of this Plan Colombia? Can you say, all right, well, there's not as much in terms of the actual cocaine coming into this country?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: I cannot tell you at this point in time, based on available information, that the amount of cocaine that comes into the United States is less. I would say that it is our general judgment that the US market will be the last market to be affected by activities in Colombia because it is the largest and the most long-term market that exists, even though the price might be higher per kilo in Western Europe, for example.

QUESTION: Does that mean that Plan Colombia is not working?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: No, it means that the results still have to be determined.

QUESTION: Is there a discussion when this comes up annually of whether there may be more pressure if you don't grant the waiver on these countries? I mean, to take away money is probably more incentive than to give it. So is that under active consideration every year that the waiver would not --

ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: You know, the world situation has just gotten better. I'm sorry. People are actually doing a better job around the world. The notion that drugs is our problem because we put cocaine in our noses and heroin in our arms is not the way the world looks at this problem anymore. The nations of the world actually believe that there's a shared responsibility. And what are we talking about in certification? We're talking about cooperation. Well, I'm sorry, it's just gotten better.

QUESTION: You don't need to be sorry. I wasn't implying it hadn't. But I asked if this was under discussion each year.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEERS: Okay, it's a fair question. But that's my answer, without my venting.

QUESTION: This is for either of you. Do you have any indication whether the withdrawal of surveillance and interdiction assets from the Coast Guard and the Air Force over the Caribbean and the Pacific has had any effect, in particular on the amount of drugs from Latin America that has gotten through?

MR. BROWN: I think we can not demonstrate that with numbers. On the one hand, immediate post-9/11, clearly there was a redeployment of principally the Coast Guard assets -- you're right -- some Customs assets, back into ports of entry security. So balancing off what we didn't see or were less able to seize in the transit zone, so-called, with this tightened port of entry security is a hard balance to make.

And I almost would say we don't have throughout the US Government -- I would listen to anybody's attempt to prove it. Maybe somebody's got better data. But I don't think we, as a government, have a good answer to that good question. We can't tell you.

Now, that movement, that understandable emphasis on port of entry security, has, in part, particularly in the Coast Guard area, been addressed, been addressed in a number of ways. You would see the net representation of Coast Guard interdiction assets, for example, to have increased over the past numbers of weeks in the traditional transit zone.

As of March 11, 2002, this document was also available online at http://www.state.gov/g/inl/rls/rm/2002/8466.htm