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US, Peru Agree to Keep Collaborating in Drug Trafficking Fight

by Reuters

   LIMA --

   Peru's foreign minister said on Monday that she and U.S. Secretary of
   State Rex Tillerson had agreed to keep working together to fight drug
   trafficking, days after President Donald Trump had threatened to curb
   aid to drug hotspots.

   "The secretary of state has recognized Peru's efforts to combat
   narco-trafficking. ... We have agreed that we must continue to join
   forces in this fight," Peru's Cayetana Aljovin said in a joint news
   conference with Tillerson.

   Trump said on Friday that unnamed countries were "pouring drugs" into
   the United States, calling to "stop the aid" after a U.S. Customs and
   Border Protection official told him that cocaine was primarily coming
   from Colombia and Peru, and trafficked through Mexico and Central
   America.

   Tillerson, who has at times contradicted Trump on foreign policy,
   struck a more conciliatory tone.

   "The U.S. is victimized certainly by the flow of narcotics to the U.S.,
   but the countries in which these narcotics are transited, or where
   organizations are carrying out their activities to move these drugs,
   they also suffer as well," he said.

   Tillerson said the United States has been in "clear dialogue" on drugs
   with Mexico, the first stop on his tour.

   "The U.S. has to acknowledge that we are the market. We are the largest
   consumer of illicit drugs and so we have to begin to work on that
   problem," he said, adding that Trump had designated $1 billion to
   solving it.

   He also praised the Peru-United States free trade agreement and said
   Trump would be wiling to look at the so-called TPP 11 agreement to be
   signed in March, after the United States pulled out of plans for a
   12-nation Trans Pacific Partnership.

   "We haven't rejected that (TPP 11) out of hand but we also have very
   strong trade agreements already in place with many of the countries in
   this hemisphere and we should use those fully," Tillerson said.

   Tillerson on Tuesday will head to Colombia, which received some $10
   billion in funding from 2000 to 2015 for military and social programs
   through the so-called Plan Colombia.