Venezuela in drug war but sovereignty comes first

CARACAS (Reuters) Venezuela welcomes outside help in the fight against
drug trafficking but will not relinquish its sovereignty, a top government
official said.

Drugs Minister Carlos Tablante told Reuters the international drug trade
was increasingly using Venezuela as a smuggling route and that ``we need to
have our alarm on.''

But, in an interview late Tuesday, he said Venezuela would jealously
prevent ``any foreign police forces to operate on our territory, in our
airspace.''

He said Western countries, including the United States, Britain, France and
the Netherlands were providing vital intelligence help to the
recentlycreated National AntiDrugs Commission (CNA) that he heads.

But he strongly opposed any deployment of U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA) agents throughout Venezuela, ''any expansion of the
DEA office here or the opening of another DEA office in (Venezuela's second
city) Maracaibo, as it has been reported.''

Because Venezuela was next door to Colombia, the world's biggest producer
of narcotics, Tablante said it was ``bound to be used as a transit route
for drugs'' to the main consuming markets, the United States and Europe.

CNA figures show that more than nine tons of cocaine and nearly three tons
of marijuana were seized in Venezuela during the first nine months of this
year. No comparative figures for 1996 were available but foreign experts
estimated that more than five tons of cocaine were seized in Venezuela last
year.

Western experts and diplomats say up to 240 tons of cocaine are shipped
through Venezuela each year. They say Venezuelan authorities only recently
started to seriously address the issue but that the CNA's creation this
year albeit with limited financial means was a move in the right
direction.

Tablante, who received U.S. drug czar Barry McCaffrey last week during
President Clinton's visit to Caracas, said the United States would be well
advised to clamp down harder on drug traffickers within its own borders.

``The biggest drug cartels are not in Colombia, Mexico or in Venezuela,
they are in the United States,'' he said.

He noted that today's drug lords were sophisticated businessmen using high
technology in the world's main financial centers and none of those were in
Venezuela. He estimated drug trafficking to be an annual market of $300
billion.

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