Reprinted from Caribbean Net News
caribbeannetnews.com

Guyana urges more US anti-drugs help

Saturday, September 2, 2006

by: Patrick Markey

Guyana (Reuters), GEORGETOWN: Guyana's President Bharrat Jagdeo urged Washington to provide more resources to help fight drug trafficking and said he will press through a tough new law to combat money laundering.

Jagdeo was declared the winner on Thursday of a presidential vote held on Monday in the impoverished nation, where tensions between the ethnic Indian majority and the Afro-Guyanese have marred past ballots.

One focus for Jagdeo will be drugs, and he said he wanted help from Washington. A U.S. government report on drugs in South America earlier this year said Guyana, a small former British colony that borders Venezuela, was struggling in its fight against the drug trade.

"I hope we just won't get lectures and that we will also get some resources to help us battle these drug traffickers because we are a poor economy," Jagdeo told Reuters in an interview this week as the results were being tallied.

"We are strengthening money-laundering legislation. ... That will be one of my first priorities to pass the new, stronger money-laundering act, we have been working on that with the U.S. government," he said.

Jagdeo, a 42-year-old ethnic Indian who entered politics as a teenager, also wants to revamp Guyana's police force and judicial system. He said Scottish police have been advising Guyana on policing this year.

He urged Washington to provide assistance in blocking illegal weapons flowing into Guyana. Jagdeo, who studied economics in Russia, plans also to bolster a police financial intelligence unit set up recently to probe money-laundering.

Experts estimate tons of cocaine shipped from Colombia crosses through Venezuela and some of it passes into neighboring countries and onto the Caribbean on its way to lucrative markets in the United States and Europe.

Traffickers take advantage of the porous borders and long, unprotected coastlines of countries often lacking the resources and manpower to fully protect their frontiers.

The U.S. report in March highlighted the influence of traffickers in Guyana. It estimated traffickers earn about $150 million a year shipping drugs through the country -- an estimated 20 percent of its gross domestic product.

"The drug trade generates violent armed groups who act as if they are above the law," the report said. "The drug trade is corrupting Guyanese society on a dangerous scale."

Violent crime became a hot campaign issue in Guyana after a string of high-profile murders. A minister and two siblings were shot to death in his home and a gang later executed five newspaper printing plant workers.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration recently set up an office in Guyana's neighbor, Suriname, and Jagdeo said the agency is in the process of setting up in Guyana.

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