Colombia, 1996

Allow me at the outset, Sir, to congratulate you

on your election as President of the current session of the

General Assembly. I salute you in my capacity as Chairman

of the Non-Aligned Movement, which has found in your

background a close identity with the defence of the interests

of the developing countries. The same is true of the

Secretary-General, Mr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who

honoured us with his attendance at the last Non-Aligned

Movement summit, held at Cartagena de Indias.

Over the past several years in Colombia, we have been

waging a difficult war against drug trafficking. In that

battle, judges, police officers, journalists and innocent

civilians have lost their lives: more than 20,000 people in

the last 10 years. In fact, last week in the southern part of

the country more than 50 soldiers of the Colombia army

who were destroying illicit crops and cocaine processing

laboratories in the jungle region were massacred by

guerrillas engaged in the defence of drug trafficking

interests. The mother of one of those murdered young

men — a 17-year-old soldier — asked me the following

day with tears in her eyes: “Why”?

Allow me today to try to answer that mother and all

those who have been victims of this war, not only in

Colombia, but around the world. Values, democracy and

national security are threatened. We are waging this war

to preserve and protect those values; to protect and

preserve our youth and our democratic form of

government; but above all to protect our national security.

No country in the world must ignore the battle against

drugs. This war is occurring today in every country,

owing to the broad power of powerful international

criminal and terrorist organizations which have extended

their tentacles over the entire planet.

Now that the cold war has ended, the United Nations

and the world must design and develop a strategy to put

an immediate end to the greatest threat to the world’s

security and stability today: the threat of drugs. It is an

epidemic that, more than any other war, can undermine

the value structure which supports the governability of

democratic systems.

As we prepare for the twenty-first century, I invite

all world leaders present or represented here today, to a

collective and above all sincere reflection on this

proposal, which Colombia presents with the moral authority

it has been granted, having been the nation which has

suffered most, which has invested most, and which has paid

the highest social and economic costs in this struggle

against drug trafficking.

In recent years, Colombia has spent 14 times more

resources fighting drug trafficking than what is invested

annually by the international community through the United

Nations system for the same purpose. Thanks to this

determined effort, Colombia has been able to avoid the

annual distribution throughout the world of more than

6 billion doses intended for drug users.

I, too, have been a victim of drug trafficking. Several

years ago I was the target of an assassination attempt that

almost cost me my life. I received 11 bullet wounds, and

still carry four bullets in my body. More recently I fell

victim to another assassination attempt, this time of a moral

nature. I was accused of having allowed money from a

cartel to infiltrate my campaign. Despite that, from the very

first day of my Administration we have worked

successfully to arrest the criminals and completely destroy

the powerful Cali cartel.

I thank God that I survived that assault too. The

Congress of the Republic of Colombia, which, under our

Constitution is the judge of the President, completely

exonerated me of all charges after a long trial that I

personally requested be held in public. Barely 48 hours ago,

before coming to the Assembly, I was the victim of yet

another attempt. Heroin was smuggled onto my aeroplane

in order to shame Colombia and its democratic

Government. This new attempt proved that the criminal

organizations have the power and the capability to penetrate

almost every institution in our society, anywhere in the

world. However, I stand here today, before this world

Assembly of democracy, with complete dignity because

nobody will stop me from presenting to the world

Colombia’s proposals to deal with the drug organizations.

I am speaking to the Assembly today bearing the

painful scars of those encounters. Similar scars are borne

by all Colombians who have been physically injured by

drug terrorism or morally wounded by international

misunderstanding. I am not here to complain; I am here to

propose a solution to this modern-day epidemic. I am

convinced that the world is losing the war against drugs.

The solution will have to be as global as the problem itself.

It will have to be as swift and irreversible as the damage

that drugs and crime are causing to the minds of the young

drug users of the world.

The achievements of Colombia and other countries

do not imply that the problem of drug trafficking has

been eradicated throughout the world. The drug problem

will be resolved only when all countries, without

exception and without hypocrisy, shoulder their own

responsibilities, which cannot be delegated to others.

To achieve this, we must set out the parameters for

a great anti-drug alliance, which include immediate and

decisive action. If we do not accomplish this, drug

trafficking, the most sinister transnational enterprise in the

world, whose resources equal $500 billion per year —

more than those of the world-wide petroleum industry —

will continue to corrupt and contaminate our peoples.

The statistics on international action to date are not

very encouraging. Drug use continues to increase under

the tolerant attitudes of some Governments, and the level

of drug seizures and confiscation barely exceeds 10 per

cent of the total of such drugs circulating in the world. In

the face of this demoralizing reality we have only two

alternatives: mutual recrimination, or cooperation. Either

we continue to criticize each other, or we work together.

Multilateral focus on the problem is the only alternative;

interventionism is not the way. The only end that

unilateral or interventionist measures achieve, as we have

seen recently, is to break mutual trust, weaken the ability

of Governments to take action, and open the way for the

consolidation of criminal organizations.

Colombia proposes an agenda of global action

against drugs, based on the principles of shared

responsibility, equality and an integrated approach: shared

responsibility, because we are all responsible for the

problem of ethical, political, social and economic

contamination produced by drug trafficking throughout

the world; equality, because no country should assume the

right to judge the conduct of another on a subject that

involves the responsibility of all on standards of

behaviour that are worldwide and collective; and

integration, because every phase of the process — from

agricultural production, to industrial processing, transport,

distribution, consumption, and money laundering — must

be addressed simultaneously, and with the same energy.

Colombia wants to be part of the solution. We do

not want to continue to be demonized by the world when,

in fact, we are victims, as all peoples are. The issues for

the global agenda against drugs are as follows: first, with

regard to the establishment of a social machinery for the

eradication of illegal crops, it is not enough to eradicate

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such crops if we are not capable of offering alternative

solutions for small peasant farmers.

Colombia endorses the innovative proposal of French

President Jacques Chirac to create a mechanism to enable

the purchase of produce grown as alternatives for illegal

crops at prices that closely approximate those paid for coca,

opium poppies and marijuana. The establishment of this

mechanism should be accompanied by a commitment to

aerial and manual eradication over five years, which would

lead to the elimination of these illicit crops throughout the

world.

Secondly, we need controls on the trafficking of

chemical precursors and weapons, which are speeding drug

trafficking and the violence that it generates. The United

Nations system must define, within the framework of the

Vienna Convention, specific guidelines to regulate the pre-

shipment certification of chemical precursors to

drug-producing countries, and contribute to producing

effective systems to control arms sales to those same

destinations.

As regards a mandate to combat money laundering,

only decisive action against the profits generated by the

drug business can stop the recycling of these resources into

production and distribution centres. Eighty per cent of drug

trafficking money circulates through the economic and

financial channels of the industrialized nations. We need

much stricter controls on the banking system and on

industries whose smuggling of goods and services are being

used to launder this drug money.

We propose that the mandate of the European

agreement governing money laundering, investigation,

seizure and forfeiture of assets derived from drug

trafficking be extended to the global level. Concurrently, we

should expand globally those decisions reached at the

World Ministerial Conference on Organized Transnational

Crime held at Naples in 1994.

As regards a worldwide intelligence centre for

cooperation in operations against cartels and drug

trafficking networks, we believe that in dealing with

international crime which starts in one place, continues in

another and ends at the point of consumption, the combined

action of all countries is required to develop the necessary

intelligence and police operations to seize shipments,

dismantle networks and pursue domestic drug dealers and

distributors. Colombia proposes such an organization of a

worldwide intelligence centre against drugs. This centre

would coordinate the collection of evidence from every

police force in the world to fight the unified multinational

drug traffickers with an equally unified response.

As regards programmes which effectively curb

demand, statistics worryingly show that consumption is

growing, not declining, and that it is doing so in the most

vulnerable sectors of our society: among young people

and ethnic minorities. Unless we curb demand, the task of

fighting supply will be ineffective in achieving a

definitive solution to the problem.

One cannot place the entire burden of drug fighting

on drug-producing countries, which are the weakest link.

We are speaking of a market that must be controlled from

both sides. Starting with an agreement on the goals for

the reduction of consumption, we propose the adoption of

an integrated plan that includes prevention campaigns,

action by non-governmental organizations and public

health initiatives accompanied by stricter laws against the

distribution and consumption of illegal drugs.

Finally, we propose a world treaty of judicial

cooperation in the war against drugs and terrorism which

must have no frontiers. Recognizing the sovereign right

of every nation to apply justice in its own territory for

crimes committed within its boundaries, no nation should

agree to be used as a refuge or sanctuary for organized

crime. Judicial reciprocity and assistance in the exchange

of evidence, the criminalization and judicial seizure of

assets derived from drug trafficking and terrorism,

extradition and the creation of high-security prisons with

standards subject to international monitoring must be an

integral part of this strategy.

Without undermining bilateral or regional

agreements, these judicial cooperation agreements would

establish the basis for the eventual formation of an

international tribunal against organized crime. Signatory

countries would submit international criminals such as

arms dealers, drug traffickers, money launderers and

terrorists to the jurisdiction of this tribunal according to

the terms of their participation agreements.

Colombia proposes to this Assembly the formation

of a group of experts who would be charged with

developing a timetable and action plan for this proposed

global agenda for the war against drugs. An initial review

of the group’s progress could be made at the 1998 special

session of the General Assembly which has been

proposed by the Government of Mexico. The group of

experts should be formed in four months’ time, and

Colombia will be pleased to host its first meeting. I call

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on world leaders to communicate to Colombia their

recommendations on how best to organize the work of this

group of experts.

The globalization of problems in today’s world is

taking place much faster than the globalization of solutions.

Terrorism, and drugs and arms trafficking do not respect

either national boundaries or barriers. Developing countries

have fewer opportunities and more limited resources to

confront the invasive power of these threats, in the face of

which there are neither weak nor strong, only victims.

I invoke the memory of those killed by these wars

which will also exist in the next century. I invoke our

children’s future, threatened by bombs, illegal drugs and

guns. I invoke the plain cause of the coexistence of the

world in order to commit ourselves to this formidable task

of blocking the path of organized crime which today

challenges our right to govern the world in peace. Finally,

I invoke the tears of all the mothers and youths of the

world who have been sacrificed in the fight against drugs

or through their use. May God illuminate our path that we

may continue this battle.