LatinNews Daily - 27 August 2015

Bolivia: On 25 August Bolivia’s State news agency, Abi, reported that the US embassy in La Paz had expressed a “predisposition to improve cooperation in the fight against narco-trafficking”. This was in response to criticism by President Evo Morales, who two days earlier had slammed figures published by the US Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), in its report ‘Coca in the Andes’, which put overall coca cultivation in Bolivia at 35,000 hectares (ha) in 2014. Morales’s criticism followed a report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (Unodc) released on 17 August, which put the figure at 20,400ha in 2014. The Unodc report said that estimates for overall cultivation areas in 2014 had fallen by 11%, with a reduction of 2,600ha from 23,000ha in 2013. President Morales subsequently invited US officials to come to Bolivia to check the results in situ. In 2008 Morales expelled the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) from Bolivia during a diplomatic spat.

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