US DRUGS CZAR URGES EUROPEANS TO USE INFLUENCE WITH VENEZUELA TO HELP
REDUCE COCAINE FLOWS

BRUSSELS, Belgium: U.S. anti-drug czar John Walters urged European
nations Tuesday to use their influence with Venezuela's President
Hugo Chavez to help curb what he called an increasing flow of cocaine
through the country's air and sea ports.

Walters told reporters during talks at European Union headquarters
there were growing reports of cocaine smuggling along routes through
Venezuela.

"I know some European nations have more extensive cooperation with the
Venezuelan government and we hope that we can use that to try to cut
some of these off," Walters said.

Chavez has accused the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency of spying and
suspended cooperation with the agency in 2005. On Monday, Venezuela's
Justice Minister Pedro Carreno said the South American country would
not allow U.S. agents to carry out counter-drug operations in the
country and accused the agency of aiding narcotics
traffickers.

"What we have seen, however, is movement by air, and there have been
press reports of this, coming out of Venezuela using known air fields,
not clandestine air fields, moving into the Caribbean area, most
heavily into Hispaniola," he said, referring to the island shared by
Haiti and the Dominican Republic. "Also movements by sea which, with
some increased regularity, look like they are also coming out of
Venezuelan seaports."

Walters said drugs smugglers were developing the "ability to have
relatively safe staging areas" in Venezuela and warned that falling
consumption in the United States and higher prices in Europe were
encouraging traffickers to export across the Atlantic.

Washington has repeatedly accused Venezuela of not cooperating in
counter-drug efforts and says cocaine shipments are increasingly
passing through the country from neighboring Colombia.

Walters also urged Europeans to boost support for Colombia's Alvaro
Uribe who is Washington's closed ally in Latin America, but is viewed
with unease by some in Europe because of claims his political camp is
too cozy with brutal far-right militias.

Walters complained that Uribe has not been "aggressively supported" by
Europe, despite successes in fighting the drugs problem and tackling
violence.

"He deserves support," Walters insisted. "I don't know of another
nation in the world over the last five years that's had the
improvement in human rights, in the protection of its citizens, that
Columbia has."

Despite those successes, Walters warned that Colombian drugs cartels
were increasingly viewing Europe as a prime market and were bypassing
trans-Atlantic interdiction efforts by using new routes via Mexico and
Africa to ship their cocaine.

"Five or 10 years ago we didn't see aircraft or ships coming into
Africa to move cocaine into Europe," Walters said, adding that the
United States was working with some European nations to halt that
trade. "We are trying to get more help in the maritime arena."

Walters' talks with the Europeans were also focused on Afghanistan,
which supplies over 90 percent of the world's opium -- the raw material
for heroin -- despite the presence of 36,000 NATO troops in the country.

He said internationally backed efforts by the Afghan government to
eradicate opium production in many of more stable northern provinces,
but overall poppy cultivation continues to rise due to increases in
the volatile south.

The problems have been compounded, he said, by an increasing tendency
by traffickers to process the opium into heroin in the country.
Although British and other NATO troops have had some success in
disrupting those operations, Walters said highly mobile, low-tech labs
used by the drugs gangs were difficult to find and destroy.