Скачать или смотреть COLOMBIA: US DRUGS CZAR PLAYS DOWN MEETING WITH SAMPER

(21 Oct 1997) Span/Eng/Nat

U-S drug czar Barry McCaffrey has discounted the significance of his meeting with Colombia's scandal-sullied president, saying his visit was designed to show support for honest Colombians.

McCaffrey's half-hour meeting on Monday with President Ernesto Samper ended a two-year freeze on top-level U-S contacts with a man who won office with 6 (m) million dollars in contributions from drug traffickers.

But McCaffrey said he wanted to encourage "the literally millions" of honest people in a nation wracked by drug corruption and dogged by a strengthening leftist insurgency.

On the second day of his trip to Colombia the U-S drug czar spoke at a news conference at the U-S embassy in the capital, Bogota.

In February, McCaffrey branded Samper an accomplice of drug traffickers and recommended his continued political isolation.

The United States later decertified Colombia as an ally in the war on drugs for the second straight year.

His visit therefore surprised many, but to no-one's surprise the issue of drugs has dominated McCaffrey's visit.

SOUNDBITE: (Spanish/English)
"I should have mentioned that. The Ambassador and I did go visit President Samper to listen to his views, to discuss our own policy. Our own viewpoint is that the United States and Colombia have enormous common interest, historical friendship, a shared economic future, very close cultural linkages. In fifteen years cocaine will not be a major drug threat to the United States. It may still be to Colombia's neighbours, but it is unfortunate that in the short run the resolution of the drug issue must dominate the bilateral relationship."
SUPER CAPTION: Barry McCaffrey, U-S drug czar

McCaffrey reiterated the U-S position that Colombia must reinstate extradition without conditions.

SOUNDBITE: (Spanish/English)
"The problem is not Colombia, or Mexico or the United States. The problem is international crime and it seems to most of us that extradition is part of that solution."
SUPER CAPTION: Barry McCaffrey, U-S drug czar

Washington was angered last month when the Senate passed an extradition measure that would not apply retroactively - meaning Cali cartel bosses now in Colombian jails could never be tried in the United States.

A vote in the lower house next week could restore retroactivity, and Samper's office said he would insist on extradition without conditions.

McCaffrey attended the funeral on Monday of two anti-drug officers killed by rebel fire Sunday during a raid on a jungle cocaine-processing complex 200 kilometres (125 miles) south of the capital.

The two men were killed as their helicopter was raked by machine-gun fire from guerrillas guarding labs they had just set ablaze.

The deaths brought to 44 the number of Colombian police killed in anti-narcotics operations over the past 3 and a half years.

Eight aircraft have also been shot down, and Colombian anti-drug police are keen on getting four armoured Blackhawk helicopters from the U-S in addition to related U-S aid worth 50 (m) million dollars.

The aid is being considered by a House-Senate conference in Washington this week.

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