31 January 2002

State Department Official Praises OAS for Work Against Illegal Drugs

By Eric Green
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- The member states of the Organization of American States (OAS) are showing a "unity of purpose" in their effort to fight the scourge of illegal drugs in the hemisphere, says Rand Beers, assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs.

Speaking at a January 30 press conference at OAS headquarters, Beers said OAS member nations have demonstrated a "hemispheric sense of common vision and acceptance of shared responsibility" to fight the illegal drug trade in the region. OAS states, he said, are committed "to act both nationally and multilaterally to deal with the drug problem" and "to follow that action with an evaluative mechanism that is multilateral."

Beers was referring to a new report released that day by the OAS' Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission on progress made in carrying out anti-drug recommendations by the organization's Multilateral Evaluation Mechanism (MEM). The document, called the "Progress Report in Drug Control -- 2001," concluded that the countries of the Americas have made "a significant effort" to take steps recommended by the MEM.

The work being done by the OAS "represents, in my view, the most significant step in the struggle against drugs at a regional level in the history of the world," Beers said. "In that context, the hemisphere has moved well beyond the original concerns of the certification process that was begun in 1984 and I think the most recent manifestation of the recognition of that was Congress' change of the [U.S.] certification process this year," i.e., H.R. 2506, the Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs Appropriations Act of 2002, signed into law January 10 by President Bush. In a statement issued upon signing the bill, Bush said he welcomed the "additional flexibility" the Act provides, including "changes to the annual counter-narcotics certification process."

The new OAS report cites progress fighting drugs in a number of areas, including the development of national anti-drug plans, the ability of countries to measure land under illicit drug-crop cultivation, and the adoption of measures against money laundering.

In addition, the report said several countries in the region have signed treaties to combat corruption and firearms trafficking, and that international cooperation against drugs has improved. On the down side, the report said the evaluation work has been hampered by a lack of technical and financial resources.

The report "represents one more step in our cooperative efforts to confront the scourge of illegal drugs, which has had such high social, economic and human costs in our region," said OAS Secretary General Cesar Gaviria. "Over time, this evaluation and assessment process [of the MEM] will strengthen our national and collective measures against drugs."

The MEM began operating in 1999 to improve hemisphere-wide cooperation and coordination on the drug issue.

The report is available on the Internet at www.cicad.oas.org/mem2001.