(E-071/01)
March 28 , 2001VENEZUELAN ENVOY TO OAS URGES COORDINATED WAR ON NARCOTICS
The international community must coordinate strategies to more effectively combat narcotics in the Hemisphere, according to Venezuela's new Ambassador to the Organization of American States.
Making his first intervention at the OAS Permanent Council, today, Ambassador Jorge Valero hailed the Multilateral Evaluation Mechanism (MEM) adopted by the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission (CICAD) as "a unique instrument, well-suited to implementing the strategy." He said national and multilateral initiatives should be "based on respect for the sovereignty and territorial jurisdiction of states as well as shared responsibility."
In singling out non-intervention, self-determination of peoples, sovereignty and equal treatment for all states under the law as "sacrosanct principles of the OAS Charter," the newly-appointed Permanent Representative to the OAS cited his country's democracy as "deeply participatory because it establishes constitutional mechanisms to encourage the society to get involved in key state institutions as well as in the formulation, implementation and management of public policy."
He underscored the need for a system whereby electoral observation missions would bolster democratic institutions while enhancing the transparency and credibility of electoral systems in the Hemisphere. "This," he asserted, "necessarily entails setting clear-cut rules."
Continuing, the Venezuelan diplomat reported that his government was "engaged in an all-out war on the scourge of corruption which so undermines the ethical foundations of our countries." As a party to the Inter-American Convention against Corruption which was signed into law in Caracas in 1996, he recalled, Venezuela has taken an active part in crafting documents paving the way for a follow-up mechanism to implement the treaty.
He renewed the call for ratification of the American Convention on Human Rights and for acceptance of the binding jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Ambassador Valero proposed as well a new, "forward-looking" hemispheric agenda incorporating political, economic, social, cultural and environmental considerations into the concept of security, "with actions geared towards peace, development and the human welfare."
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