Excerpt from testimony of Secretary of State Colin Powell, Senate Appropriations Committee Foreign Operations Subcommittee, May 15, 2001

Excerpt from testimony of Secretary of State Colin Powell, Senate Appropriations Committee Foreign Operations Subcommittee, May 15, 2001
POWELL: ...With respect to the Andean regional initiative and the counter- drug initiative within it, I think it is a logical and comprehensive follow-on to Plan Colombia, where we're expanding our efforts throughout the whole region. And I'll have a little bit more to say about that in my statement. But I think we can make a case that this is a worthwhile investment in our overall drug strategy but also in our overall development strategy, not just going after drugs in those regions, as sources of drugs that come to the United States, but also helping to improve the lives of those people, help their democracy become stabilized, fight off the corrosive effect of narco-trafficking on their democracies.

So in the programs we're going to be requesting and the money we're requesting for those programs in this fiscal year budget, you'll see us talk about democracy-building activities, alternative crops, things of that nature, as well as the more standard kinds of drug interdiction activities.

We talked briefly -- I touched briefly on the Andean Regional Initiative. Let me just say that, in the over $800 million for this initiative, about half is for Colombia, half is for the other nations in the region; about half is for drug interdiction, the other half is for those other activities I mentioned of crop substitution, democracy-building, investment in the infrastructure, giving these populations the wherewithal to resist -- resist the corruption and the corrosiveness that comes with the presence of narco-traffickers in the region; not just in Colombia but throughout the whole region.

Obviously the ultimate solution to this problem is demand reduction.

The ultimate solution to this problem is prevention and rehabilitation of people who have been drug users through treatment. And the new czar, the new director of this program, Mr. Walters, has made a commitment and the president has made a commitment to focus on demand reduction as well as supply reduction and interdiction efforts. But I think to keep going with the programs that we have now, I would ask the Congress to fully support the request that we have made for the Andean regional initiative.

LEAHY: .... I think of the issues of Plan Colombia. We're not going to have time to go into all of those.

I'll put some questions in the record, but I think these program cost billions of dollars. I find it hard to see how they're showing success. The amount of drugs coming into the United States has gone up, not down. The price to people in the United States has actually gone down. It's not doing too much on supply and demand, but we spend billions down there. We don't have an adequate amount for a person with a drug problem goes in for treatment. They're told, "Yes, you do need treatment. You're so good to come forward. And we're going to put you on our priority list for six months from now." Maybe we're spending money in the wrong place. I think we should be looking at that.

Peru -- we've worked with people that have been involved in massive criminal activity in Peru. You know, it is certainly not a mark of success in stopping drugs by shooting a missionary and her baby, whether by mistake or stupidity or what.

Frankly, I would hope that we look one more time at all of that. We're talking about our aerial fumigation. It's supposed to be very safe, but the manufacturer says, "We recommend that grazing animals such as horses, cattle, sheep, goats, rabbits and fowl remain out of the treated area for two weeks. It should not be applied to bodies of water. People should stay out of a treated area until it's thoroughly dry." But that's part of what we do.

I see it more as a case where we're spending an awful lot money with wonderful intentions, sometimes dealing with people that we can admire for their policies, like President Pastrana of Colombia. But the results are still, I believe, negligible. So, if we're looking for money, maybe this is one we should look at again.

SEN. LEAHY: -- for the congressional level to waive. And so it goes back to other places like Colombia. We included the human rights record -- human rights conditions on the aid to the Colombian military because they have a poor human rights record. The House added a waiver. President Clinton used the waiver. Since then the paramilitaries have doubled in size, the number of massacres have increased. The paramilitaries, a week or so ago, mutilated people with a chainsaw. I mean, these are not delicate sorts. The paramilitary has close links with the army. A year has passed. I think we need to continue the conditions on Colombia, but is it going to be the policy to just waive the human rights conditions again if we leave a waiver in there?

SEC. POWELL: I think what we have to do is, when the time comes to make that decision, take a complete look at what has transpired since the last waiver.

SEN. LEAHY: I understand that, but what I'm saying is this. There are -- and there's bipartisan concern up here; none of us want to see our country hit with drugs, but we look at -- in some ways, I worry about this drug war becoming something similar to what we saw during the Cold War. Many times, with administrations of both parties, if you had the country where they had the worst abuse of human rights, you might have a dictator, you might have all these other problems, but if they said, "By gosh, we're anti-Soviet Union, we're anti-communist, would you please send us some aid?" we'd shovel it in, and we'd close our eyes to some problems that were far greater than anything we might have faced at that time from the Soviet Union.

And I wish we'd look at what's happening down in Colombia, where we give more aid to the military, they give more aid to the paramilitaries, the paramilitaries are involved with atrocities; the guerrillas are, too. The drug lords seem to flourish, but the paramilitary are now working as sort of semi-drug lords, too. And then we do other things. We spray, what is it, glysophate down there, and the manufacturer says people should stay out of a treated area until it's thoroughly dry, you shouldn't -- you should keep animals out, for two weeks, out of the area. In Mississippi, they've cut back on the use of it because it goes on. We're finally looking at the health effects in Colombia. The Colombia officials and the environmental groups, including the World Wildlife Fund have called for a halt to the spraying, at least until we find out the results of a study. Should we at least take that step?

SEC. POWELL: I think the manufacturer's cautions are well- grounded, but I have seen no evidence so far that illnesses or problems of the kind suggested have -- have broken out or been a problem as a result of the spraying.

With respect to the paramilitaries, of course we don't support them, and we don't support -- and we speak candidly to the Colombian government and, in my conversations with my Colombian colleagues, make the point that human rights are an essential part of our strategy, and if they really want to be successful at the end of the day in defeating not only the insurgencies, but the narcotraffickers, they have to show to their population a commitment to human rights and democracy. The problem Colombia has is their democracy is being put at serious risk by these people, so they are in a war.