The minister sticks by his target of `wiping out terrorism' by 2006. He says that more is not being done just yet because of budget constraints, but that he soon expected to create a special police battalion trained in counterinsurgency skills. His hope is that the US will help foot the bill.
PERU | Uncertainty over coca eradication drive. In late September, Nils Ericsson, head of Peru's anti-drugs agency, the Comisión Nacional para el Desarrollo y Vida sin Drogas (Devida), announced that 5,000 hectares of coca plantations have been eradicated; almost two-thirds of the target for the year. The figure has raised eyebrows, as it would mean that the monthly average recorded in January-May has trebled, at a time when strikes by growers and military reluctance are widely assumed to have reduced the rate of eradication. In early October, interior minister Rospigliosi put the surface cleared of coca at 4,200ha.
Last year 7,200ha were cleared; as the total at year-end was estimated at 46,700ha, some 7,700ha of new plantations must have been introduced. As in Bolivia, eradication does not seem to be keeping pace with new planting.
ECUADOR-COLOMBIA | Joint inquiry into coca fumigation. Two commissions of scientists and officials, one from Colombia, the other from Ecuador, have begun a joint evaluation of the effects of fumigating coca plantations with glyphosate, in view of the large number of reports about harm to people, livestock and legal crops on the Ecuadorean side of the border.
Though they are not expected to produce a report until mid-October, members of the Colombian commission have already made public the findings of studies purportedly showing that the concentration of the sprayed chemical is too low to cause serious harm to humans.
VENEZUELA | Unexplained bombings. Since 19 September a string of bombings, all victimless, have been staged against targets, chiefly military, in Caracas. The first one caused considerable material damage to the barracks of the presidential guard of honour, across the road from the presidential palace.
On 4 October, a grenade damaged the premises of the national telecomunications commission, Conatel. On 5 October an explosive device set off a fuel truck, which in turn caused another to explode, at the La Carlota airbase, seat of the high commands of the air force and the army air arm. The same day, a second device exploded at Fuerte Tiuna, seat of the defence ministry and the largest army garrison in the capital.
The government has accused `coup plotters' of the opposition's most radical wing. The opposition, in turn, has claimed that the attacks have been staged by the government to justify imposing a state of emergency and calling off the referendum on whether President Hugo Chávez 's mandate should be revoked.
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