BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — U. S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday subsidized Colombia’s recent efforts to rethink its drug policy and said Biden’s leadership and the newly elected Colombian government will work together on rural development systems and interdiction efforts while sharing drugs. groups. of. traffickers. of. intelligence.
The comments came after a meeting between Blinken and Colombian President Gustavo Petro in Bogota, the first stop on a South American tour that the secretary of state will also stop in Chile and Peru.
“We strongly support the holistic technique that President Petro’s administration is adopting to counter narcotics through comprehensive rural security, justice, development, environmental protection, aid at the sources and the call for help, adding in the United States,” Blinken said at a press conference.
Last month, Petro addressed the United Nations General Assembly and said U. S. -led efforts to combat global drug trafficking had been “a failure. “Upcoming countries.
On Monday, the Colombian president spoke in a combative tone.
After the meeting with Blinken, Petro said the two sides discussed “more flexible” tactics to combat drug trafficking aimed at slowing production and consumption in the hemisphere.
Petro said coca growers in remote areas of Colombia deserve to download land titles, so they can more easily incorporate into the legal economy. He advised that the U. S. deserves to be created for projects that would pay some coca growers to leave the drug industry and become protectors of the Amazon rainforest.
Colombia is suffering due to cocaine production as several armed teams take deserted rural spaces through the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia following its 2016 peace deal with the government, while government facilities are slow to arrive.
Petro said tougher measures are needed against white-collar criminals who profit from the cocaine industry in Colombia and the United States, but argued that law enforcement should not target poor farmers who grow coca to make a living in remote areas.
Colombia’s president said aerial fumigation of coca crops with chemicals would remain environmentally banned, but added that his administration would seek to manually eliminate “industrial-sized” coca crops through organized crime.