The Colombian president, Gustavo Petro, proposed this Friday the integration of his country’s police forces with those of Ecuador, Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Venezuela and Guyana to build an “effective policy” at the South American and Caribbean level to combat drug trafficking.
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This was expressed by Petro during a 40-minute television address in which he once again expressed his disagreement with the United States’ decision to remove Colombia from the list of countries fighting drug trafficking.
“Here we must integrate the police, Venezuelan and Colombian intelligence, just as here we must integrate Colombian and Ecuadorian intelligence and public forces,” he stated.
He recalled that this integration is already underway with Brazil, but it must be extended to Peru and Bolivia to “to really be able to build an effective policy on a South American and Caribbean scale.”
On the other hand, Petro assured that the Colombian authorities have managed to control the ports of Buenaventura, Colombia’s main port on the Pacific, and Tumaco, where a large amount of cocaine was leaving for Europe and the United States, but he regretted that the alkaloid produced in the country is going to Ecuador.
He explained that apparently the “most of the export of cocaine through the Pacific is being done through the ports of Ecuador, carrying the trail of death towards Ecuador and making Ecuador a larger cocaine export platform than the one that currently exists in Colombia.”
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President Gustavo Petro
Colombian Presidency
“That is not good news for Colombia, perhaps a break, perhaps a demonstration that we are effective in the fight against drug trafficking and that we can be more effective. But this displacement of the mafias towards Ecuador is obviously a problem for Ecuador.”he assured.
In that sense, he said that he asked the Colombian Police to integrate with that of Ecuador so that there “can do the same thing that we do in such a way that it also becomes effective in the fight against drug trafficking.”
The president took advantage of the speech to reiterate that the Cartel of the Suns – a group of drug traffickers classified as a terrorist organization by the United States– does not exist and, on the contrary, the actions awarded to it are carried out by what has been called the ‘drug trafficking board’.
The United States accuses the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, of being linked to the Cartel of the Suns, and To combat drug trafficking, he ordered a military deployment in the Caribbean and increased the reward for information leading to the capture of Chavista to $50 million.
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Drug trafficking
Photo:iStock
The director of the Colombian Police leaves
The president also announced that he will change the director of the Colombian Police, General Carlos Triana, who he said has done a good job, but that there are flaws.
“I have asked for a change in the director, he has done a great job, but there are some flaws that I think we have to deeply overcome,” he pointed out.
In that context, Petro mentioned the death of thirteen police officers that occurred last August in an attack against an anti-narcotics helicopter in a rural area of the municipality of Amalfi, in the department of Antioquia (northwest).
The attack, of which the Government accused the FARC dissidents and which was later attributed to the National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrilla, occurred while the aircraft was carrying out coca crop eradication work in Amalfi.
EFE
