U.S. policy to combat international narcotics trafficking and international crime - Robert S. Gelbard, Asst. Secretary for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs - Transcript

US Department of State Dispatch, Nov 13, 1995

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee: Thank you for this opportunity to update you on the Administration's policy and programs to combat international narcotics and the growing transnational crime problem. Few American leaders have worked as arduously over the years as Chairman Gilman to keep this important public policy topic in the forefront of our minds. We all firmly support efforts aimed at thwarting these devastating influences. So, we might ask, what is different now? Undeniably, our world has changed and so have the dangers that confront us. In the post-Cold War era, we recognize that international crime is a major threat to world stability and our own national security. More than ever before, the American people and American leaders are insisting upon practical, measures to combat it.

Mr. Chairman, I have been associated with these difficult challenges in one capacity or another for over a decade, and I have been directly responsible for them in the foreign policy arena for nearly two years. This experience has taught me that there are no easy solutions to these problems. It has also taught me that if we are going to invest American money, effort, and prestige in fighting them, we have an obligation to produce concrete results. Over the past two years, we have made a heightened commitment to doing this, and we are succeeding. Simply put, we are making other countries shoulder more of their responsibility for fighting the global threats of narcotics trafficking and international organized crime. We are also ensuring that worldwide programs and policies target the most critical, the most significant aspects of these threats.

Countries today are taking truly pragmatic steps to combat criminal elements that undermine the many positive gains we are witnessing around the world. Nowhere was this more evident than at the 50th anniversary proceedings of the United Nations in New York just 10 days ago. Many nations stood up and pledged fresh resolve to work together against transnational crime, which has devolved into our common enemy.

As he called upon nations to meet the growing dangers posed by international organized crime, the President announced a series of major U.S. initiatives against the criminal underworld. Taken as a whole, they are practical steps aimed at solidifying recent successes and strengthening the foundation of our international crime and drug control efforts. As the President put it,

In our global village, progress can spread quickly, but trouble can, too. Trouble on the far end of town soon becomes a plague on everyone's house... Nowhere is cooperation more vital than in fighting the increasingly interconnected groups that traffic in terror, organized crime, and drug smuggling.

Responding to the Narcotics

Threat

My bureau in the Department of State now includes responsibility for international law enforcement and crime initiatives, but I would like first to focus on our traditional overseas drug control programs where a large share of our funding is dedicated.

The President's National Drug Control Strategy represents a flexible and integrated response. It involves demand reduction and drug awareness at home, law enforcement and interdiction at home and abroad, and a variety of law enforcement, diplomatic, and alternative development initiatives designed to get other countries to take more aggressive actions on their own. In relative terms, the funding we have for overseas programs aimed at attacking cocaine and heroin is very limited. Our counternarcotics budget in FY 1995 was less than 1% of the Federal Government's overall anti-drug spending that year. This means that every penny counts. It means that the pressures and incentives we apply must be carefully orchestrated to achieve maximum effect. It also means that we must work to convince countries that confronting the threat ultimately serves their own national interest. The key elements of our overseas strategy seek to:

* Reduce coca cultivation in the Andes, with the ultimate aim of eliminating coca and dismantling the global trafficking networks based in Colombia and elsewhere.

* Disrupt the transshipment of drugs, especially through Mexico, Brazil, Central America, and the Caribbean.

* Work through international organizations and with our European and Asian allies and other key countries to prevent criminals from laundering trafficking proceeds through legitimate or sophisticated underground financial systems.

* Disrupt cultivation and trafficking of opium poppy in Southeast and Southwest Asia, to the extent possible, given the difficult political and security situations such as in Burma, Afghanistan, or Iran.

* Stop the spread and eventually roll back the global trafficking networks that got their start in Nigeria and now have spread their tentacles throughout Africa and beyond.

With regard to cocaine, the centerpiece of our program lies in the source countries that grow coca and the international organizations that control most cocaine processing and worldwide distribution. The crops and organizations are daunting targets, but the price that countries pay for not confronting them is high. Drug money and corruption and violence destroy democratic institutions and their leaders. The drug economy undermines economic stability in developing nations and drug use sickens and kills their people.