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Director Kerlikowske Meets with Columbian President, Tours Cacao Nursery and Visits USAID-funded housing project
ONDCP Director Gil Kerlikowske recently returned from his first trip to Colombia, where he met with Colombian President Álvaro Uribe and several of his cabinet ministers, as well as with General Oscar Naranjo, director of the Colombia National Police. At a press conference held at a drug-prevention program in Bogotá, Director Kerlikowkse stressed the importance of drug prevention and praised the close working relationship between the U.S. and Colombian governments in combatting drug trafficking.
Director Kerlikowske also visited Colombia's Tumaco region in the southern state of Nariño, where he toured a cacao nursery that trains local farmers, in a region where coca cultivation is common, to grow alternative crops. (Cacao is the plant processed to produce chocolate, while coca is the plant processed to produce cocaine.) He also visited a USAID-funded housing project for 192 families displaced by drug trafficking and violence, and a Colombian Coast Guard base where he viewed siezed semi-submersible vessels used by drug traffickers to transport cocaine.
During the two-day trip, Director Kerlikowske was the guest of U.S. Ambassador to Colombia, William R. Brownfield.
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| Director Kerlikowske kneels to talk to a child at the USAID-funded Cristo Rey housing project, home to 192 families displaced by drug trafficking and violence, in the Colombian state of Nariño. |
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| A member of the Colombian Coast Guard shows Director Kerlikowkse the inside of a seized semisubmersible vessel. Drug traffickers pack vessels like these with cocaine until they are barely visible on the ocean's surface and then attempt to navigate their way hundreds of miles in the open sea to Mexico's coast. |
