unitex@rubbs.fidonet.org (unitex) (09/16/89)
UNOV DIRECTOR-GENERAL SAYS WORLD IS NOW AT WAR AGAINST
Posting Date: 09/14/89 Source: UNITEX Network, Hoboken, NJ, USA
TRAFFICKERS
UN PRESS RELEASE:
Second Interregional Meeting of Heads Of National Drug Law
Enforcement Agencies Opens
VIENNA, 11 September (UN Information Service) -- A United
Nations multilateral strike force to combat drug traffickers was
one of several options
mentioned by Margaret J. Anstee, Director-General of the United
Nations Office at Vienna, to an international meeting of law
enforcement officers.
Miss Anstee was opening the second Interregional Meeting of Heads
of National Narcotic Drugs Law Enforcement Agencies (HONLEA),
which is being held at the Vienna Hofburg from 11-15 September.
She said such a proposal, suggested in a number of quarters,
most recently by Prime Minister Manley of Jamaica, raised many
delicate and difficult issues.
"With the recent tragic events in Colombia, the fight against
drugs has taken on the dimensions of an all out war", she said.
"We must fight and we must win. The cost will be high. But the
cost of surrender would be catastrophe."
Javier Coello Trejo, Deputy Attorney-General of Mexico, was this
morning unanimously elected Chairman of the Meeting. Elected as
Vice-Chairmen were M.M. Bhatnagar (India) and Andras Turos
(Hungary). Robert Pietersz (Netherlands Antilles) was elected
Rapporteur.
Taking his chair, Mr. Coello Trejo said Mexico welcomed the
initiative of the Secretary-General of the United Nations to
convene the international community to discuss and examine the
issue of drugs which required attention and action at the
international level.
Also, Francisco Ramos-Galino, Director of the Division of
Narcotic Drugs, said that Member States should ratify and
implement the 1988 Convention against Illicit Traffic in
Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances as soon as possible.
That would send a message of hope to those countries suffering
most from illicit trafficking, particularly Colombia, Bolivia and
Peru.
At the next meeting, scheduled for later today, developments
since the 1986 HONLEA were to be considered.
Statements
MARGARET J. ANSTEE, Director-General of the United Nations Office
at Vienna, and Representative of the Secretary-General, said
that, like 50 years ago, the world was again at war. She said,
with the recent events in Colombia
the fight against drugs had taken on the dimensions of an all-out
war. Now the Colombian Government had been faced with a stark
choice: it had either to declare war on the traffickers or, in
effect, to surrender. In an act of immense courage, it had
unequivocally chosen the former course.
For, as with the invasion of Poland in 1939, that was not just
the problem of one country alone. The murder of a Colombian
judge, police chief or politician engaged in bringing drug
traffickers to justice was an assault not only against the
individual but against everyone.
No one country, nor even a few countries together, could deal
effectively with the menace of the drug cartels. An effective
response required world-wid
international co-operation. Since the last HONLEA three years
ago, encouraging
progress had been made in strengthening international
co-operation against drug abuse and illicit trafficking. The
key role of the United Nations was increasingly recognized, and
its mandates and responsibilities had increased
correspondingly.
The extraordinarily complex problem of drugs could only be
resolved by simultaneous attacks on all its manifold aspects:
control of supply, reduction
of demand, suppression of trafficking and the prevention and
* Origin: UNITEX --> Toward a United Species (1:107/501)
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