Chavez ordered a halt to all cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement

Complaints about Venezuelan counter-narcotics operations have risen since August 2005, when Chavez ordered a halt to all cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration office in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital. Since then, seizures have fallen, and drug shipments by aircraft and shipping containers have skyrocketed, U.S. officials have said.<br />Then-U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield said in 2006 that the amount of drugs flowing through Venezuela had quintupled in five years.<br />In December, U.S. officials in Caracas said as many as 100 illicit airstrips, stretching from Tachira state in western Venezuela to Bolivar state in the east, were used to transport cocaine. The officials complained that the Chavez government had brought no major convictions of traffickers in several years. <br />Walters said the volume of Colombian cocaine moving through Venezuela, believed to represent at least one-third of Colombia's production, continues to increase with no discernible effort by Chavez government to impede it. He provided no statistics to back up his assertion.<br />Signs of increasing shipments are reflected in rising drug busts in Europe, especially in Spain and Portugal, Walters said. <br />The European Union last year opened a command center in Lisbon to direct military interdiction efforts, similar to the Pentagon's Joint Interagency Task Force South command center in Key West.<br />This month, Portuguese police announced that they had found nearly 10 tons of cocaine in a shipping container that had arrived from Venezuela. <br />"On the destination side of this flow, there has been action, but on the departure side of the flow, Chavez has not responded, not even in the minimal way," Walters said.

Chavez ordered a halt to all cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement

Complaints about Venezuelan counter-narcotics operations have risen since August 2005, when Chavez ordered a halt to all cooperation with th...

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