PRESS CONFERENCE BY PRESIDENT OF COSTA RICA

Press Briefing

PRESS CONFERENCE BY PRESIDENT OF COSTA RICA

Last year, Costa Rican police seized eight tons of cocaine that was in transit through the country, President Miguel Angel Rodriguez Echeverria told correspondents at a Headquarters press conference this afternoon.

Answering a correspondent who had asked whether Costa Rica was a transit country for drugs, President Rodriguez said the country lay between production and consumption centres, which accounted for the fact that drugs flowed through its seas, skies and territory towards the consumption markets.

The President, who addressed the General Assembly special session on drugs yesterday, said his Government had taken strong enforcement action, including establishing a unit to coordinate national anti-drug efforts. The Office of Deputy Minister of the Presidency in charge of drug abuse had been established. Bringing preventive tasks together, the Office worked directly with school teachers, churches and volunteer organizations, and undertook information campaigns to alert people of the consequences of drug abuse and parents and families to the symptoms of incipient drug use.

The Government was also fighting to rehabilitate those who had used drugs, contrary to the notion that no treatment or reform was possible for drug abusers, President Rodriguez added. It was supporting civil society organizations working to offer various alternatives and treatment in order to cure drug users.

Although the anti-drug unit did not work directly with the police force, it did cooperate in coordinating police activity with other countries, in order to work jointly against drugs, the President continued. A new special unit would begin work in a few weeks to combat money-laundering and make Costa Rica increasingly unattractive to traffickers as a point of passage.

Asked by another correspondent whether Costa Rica would support a call by the President of Colombia and others today for the establishment of an anti-drug international police academy, he said Costa Rica agreed with fostering the initiative taken by Panama for creating an international entity to deal with the drug issue. It would help professionalize the civil forces to ensure that they were duly prepared and trained to cope with the requirements of fighting drugs.

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