The United States government assured EFE that the suspension of its satellite monitoring of coca fields in Colombia is a “temporary” measure.
The head of the State Department’s anti-drug bureau, Todd Robinson, said some federal agencies “felt the need to temporarily stop monitoring fields used for coca production.”
However, he assured that the Department of State has continued to monitor such crops through “the figures of the UN”, whose office against Drugs and Crime (UNODC) prepares an annual report on the matter.
“I think it will resume next year and we will once again have the two metrics (the UN and the US) in the monitoring campaigns,” the diplomat explained in an interview with EFE.
The newspaper EL TIEMPO published in July that Washington had suspended its satellite monitoring of crops in Colombia used for decades to evaluate the anti-drug policy of the South American country, a story echoed by Colombian President Gustavo Petro, assuring that “the things change.”
After that information was published, Republican congresswoman María Elvira Salazar criticized on Twitter the “little favor” to Petro from the US president, Democrat Joe Biden.
(Keep reading: The United States Coast Guard rescues a young man alive in a nearly submerged boat)
But in a subsequent appearance before a House subcommittee, the head of the State Department’s Office of Western Affairs, Mark Wells, said the decision to suspend monitoring was made in 2020, before President Trump came to power. Petro.
He Colombian government has proposed a new comprehensive approach to drug policy in the region considering that the frontal war against drug trafficking promoted during the last 50 years by the United States has failed.
The president has also assured that “the structure of narcotics consumption is changing for the worse” in the United States, with an increase in fentanyl trafficking, “which reduces the demand for cocaine.”
(You can read: Anti-drug policy: Government would pay subsidies to peasants to stop growing coca).
“It would be wrong to say that cocaine is not still a problem. It is in the United States and in Europe, and a growing problem in Asia,” Robinson said during the interview.
Regarding Colombia’s anti-drug policy, the US diplomat explained that Petro has called for the security of rural communities to be guaranteed, for the environmental crimes of drug traffickers to be punished and for corruption to be combated.
“We are more than happy to work with him in all these areas. And we believe that we have great partners in Colombia,” he said.
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