Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/un1drugs062608.html
UNITED NATIONS, June 26 -- The UN's Vienna-based narcotics and crime czar Antonio Maria Costa regaled Ambassadors and reporters on Thursday with his view of the war on drugs. He correlated drug production with the strength of rebel groups, listing the Taliban, Colombia's FARC and, in a historical footnote, Alberto Fujimori's crackdown on the Shining Path and drugs in Peru. Inner City Press asked if he was unequivocally promoting the strengthening of all governments, for example in Myanmar and North Korea.
Costa paused while his colleague cued up some slides about Myanmar. "It's problematic," Costa intoned, "to deal with a country with which we have severe problems with human rights." He went on to say that despite an "uptick" in 2007, opium production in Myanmar is generally down, and confined to the eastern part of the country. "Let's be honest," he said," there's limited control by government there." He said that Laos has been certified as opium free, but there are still "cohorts" of old people addicted to heroin, which is brought in from Myanmar. The North Korea portion of the question he did not answer as all, despite reports of governmental involvement in the drug trade.
Also from the audience came impassioned criticism of Costa's UN Office of Drugs and Crime from the Ambassador of Cape Verde, who disputed the area devoted to drug cultivation, and of Colombia, who told Costa to stop correlating narcotics production with the strength of the government. She said that the strength of the FARC has waned, even though drug production numbers are up. Stick with the numbers, she counseled, stick with the facts. That's good advice.
