Pubdate: Fri, 30 Jan 2009
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2009 Los Angeles Times
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/bc7El3Yo
Website: http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Author: Chris Kraul, Reporting from La Paz, Bolivia
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Evo+Morales
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/Bolivia

DEA PRESENCE ENDS IN BOLIVIA

The Last of the U.S. Drug Agents Leaves on President Evo Morales'
Orders. The U.S. and Bolivia Are in a Bitter Dispute Over the South
American Country's Anti-Drug Efforts.

The last U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents left Bolivia on
Thursday after having been ordered out by President Evo Morales, even
as Bolivian police report that coca cultivation and cocaine
processing are on the rise.

Morales demanded the DEA's exit in November as part of a bitter
dispute between U.S. and Bolivian officials that included his
expulsion of U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg and the Bush
administration's decertification of Bolivia's anti-drug effort.

The departure in recent weeks of three dozen agents ends the DEA's
presence here after more than three decades. Senior law enforcement
officials said it was the first time a DEA operation had been ordered
out of a country en masse.

Officials in the DEA's office here declined to comment before
leaving, although officials said this week that all of them would be
reassigned to countries bordering Bolivia to continue monitoring the
situation here.

During the agency's 35-year history, it has generally maintained good
relations with host Latin American nations, which take advantage of
its global intelligence network and training programs in the United
States to fight traffickers.

Recent exceptions include Bolivia, where Morales has accused the DEA
of engaging in espionage. Similar charges were leveled by Venezuelan
President Hugo Chavez, who has reduced the DEA's presence from 10 to
two agents since 2005 by refusing to renew agents' work permits.

Coca cultivation and cocaine processing in Bolivia are still far
below the levels seen in the 1980s before Colombia began to leapfrog
Bolivia and Peru to become the leading coca farming and cocaine
trafficking country. Nowadays, Colombia produces about six times more
cocaine than Bolivia, according to recent international estimates.

But the trend lines have counter-narcotics officials concerned. More
than 7 tons of cocaine were seized here last year, quintuple the
amount in 2006. There was also a 24% increase in the number of
illegal cocaine labs destroyed and 55% more pounds of coca leaf
farmed over the two-year period, according to figures kept by
Bolivia's anti-narcotics police force.

There has also been an alarming "Colombianization" of lab methods
used to produce higher volumes of cocaine. Bolivians arrested six
suspected Colombian traffickers in the city of Cochabamba in May.

New evidence that more Bolivian cocaine is finding its way to U.S.
and European markets has foreign counter-narcotics officials here concerned.

Kathryn Ledebur, director of the Cochabamba-based Andean Information
Network, a nongovernmental agency that analyzes U.S. drug policy,
said the decertification under former President Bush was based on
erroneous and inflated data and that the Obama administration should
reconsider the decision, which cost Bolivia millions of dollars in
preferential trade benefits.

"It's important to note that the U.S. State Department's Narcotic
Affairs Section, the much larger U.S. governmental agency that
supervised DEA activities, has not been asked to leave, and bilateral
drug control cooperation continues," Ledebur said. "The Morales
administration has expressed a desire to redefine bilateral relations
with the Obama administration, which will hopefully provide a
framework for a more pragmatic interaction."

At a news conference Wednesday, Bolivian Foreign Minister David
Choquehuanca said his government would like to renew ties with the
U.S. and accept an American ambassador back into the country, now
that President Obama has taken office.

Bolivian law allows the cultivation of approximately 40,000 acres of
coca to supply traditional demand in this significantly indigenous
country, where the chewing of coca leaves is an age-old custom. Coca
tea is a common beverage used to mitigate the effects of high altitude.

But in recent years, U.S. and other foreign counter-narcotics
agencies have complained that twice the amount of coca needed for
traditional consumption is being grown and that the excess is used to
produce cocaine.
__________________________________________________________________________
Distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in
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---
MAP posted-by: Richard Lake


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