CHAVEZ ENABLING DRUG FLOW?

Plan Venezuela In Our Future?

US Steps Up Rhetoric, Says Venezuela Lets Smuggling Flourish

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA -- White House drug czar John P. Walters charged
Sunday that the government of President Hugo Chavez was facilitating
the rising flow of drugs from his nation to Europe and North America
through a lack of enforcement.

The public criticism by Walters, who heads the Office of National
Drug Control Policy, was unusually harsh for the Bush administration,
which has tried to steer clear of provoking the fiery Venezuelan leader.

With some exceptions, State Department and counter-narcotics
officials typically have made disparaging remarks about Venezuela's
weak drug interdiction program anonymously.

"Where are the big seizures, where are the big arrests of individuals
who are at least logistical coordinators? When it's being launched
from controlled airports and seaports, where are the arrests of
corrupt officials? At some point here, this is tantamount to
collusion," Walters said in an interview.

In September, the U.S. government said Venezuela's was one of two
governments that had failed to take sufficient counter-narcotics
actions. The Venezuela Information Office, a Washington-based agency
funded by the Chavez government, said the accusations were misleading
and ignored the country's "history of cooperating" with international agencies.

US complaints about Venezuelan counter-narcotics operations have
risen since August 2005, when Mr. Chavez ordered a halt to all
cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration office in
Caracas, the Venezuelan capital. Since then, seizures have fallen,
and drug shipments by aircraft and shipping containers have
skyrocketed, U.S. officials have said.

Mr. Walters said the volume of Colombian cocaine moving through
Venezuela, believed to represent at least one-third of Colombia's
production, continues to increase with no discernible effort by
Chavez government to impede it. He provided no statistics to back up
his assertion.