MEXICO CITY, February 22 (Itar-Tass) — The head of Russia’s federal drug control service, Viktor Ivanov, during his visit to Mexico put forward several anti-drug trafficking initiatives that can be jointly translated into reality by Russia and Latin American countries.
Speaking at the National Crime Victim Law Institute he called for expansion of joint operations to fight drug trafficking taking into account the fact that “today transatlantic drug traffic from Latin America through Europe brings cocaine to Russia.”
Ivanov initiated an international plan to liquidate drug production in Latin America codenamed Raduga-3 (Rainbow).
He proposed to train personnel for Latin America on the basis of Russia’s professional development programs.
“In particular, we would like to develop a joint program for personnel training with the security department of the Central American Integration System and may be, to create a personnel development centre for all countries of Central America,” Ivanov said.
“Within the framework of the Central American Integration System we propose to create a working group that will include leading national and international experts from the United Nations, Latin American organizations, the World Bank and other specialists to develop a new approach to the anti-drug policy based on the implementation of the right to development,” he said.
“It would be expedient to set up a similar group under such promising organization” as the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States.
Ivanov also called for adopting measures “to bring rehabilitation of drug abusers to a new technological level and develop new methods and approaches to bring people back to society.”
At the same time he stressed the need “for increasing investments and for attracting technical support to countries of South and Central America.”
“It would be expedient to create the so-called interactive map of the anti-drug policy in Central America,” Ivanov said proposing “to open a laboratory of development projects to plan social, economic and infrastructure efforts to liquidate drug production and drug trafficking.”
In conclusion the director of the Russian federal drug control service proposed to put the issue of the global fight against drug trafficking as the source of drug money in the world on the agenda of the G20 summit in Mexico in June.