Colombia reduced coca plantations by 25 percent in the past twelve months, according to a monitoring report of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (Unodc) released here today.
The Office, which worked on this project for a year, highlighted the “significant reduction of cultivated acres” in the past few months.
Figures in the study show that on Dec. 31, 2012, the country had 118,610 acres of coca distributed in 23 of the 32 departments, said the report. This amounts to a reduction of 25 percent against the 158,147 acres in 2011.
According to Unodc, only the departments of Norte de Santander, Caqueta and Choco showed an increase in areas planted with coca, and three remained stable.
Greatest reductions occurred in Narino, Putumayo, Guaviare and Cauca, though Narino remains the worst hit, despite a significant reduction in the past twelve months.
The report says that a major challenge to the Colombian Government will be “to secure sustainability of this reduction.”
Colombian President Santos Could Meet FARC-EP Leader
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, said today that he does not rule out the possibility of meeting with Timoleon Jimenez, top leader of the FARC-EP, “when Havana negotiations are advanced and it is absolutely necessary to achieve peace.”
Speaking to the FM radio station, the president said he believes in the peaceful intentions of the supreme leader of the insurgent force.
Santos reiterated that he maintains his optimism about the process as part of conversations taking place in Cuba since November 2012, noting that they are going well. “We’re going in the right direction”, he said.
Santos also praised the importance of the first partial agreement signed with the guerrillas “in a matter as significant as the comprehensive agricultural development,” which he described as a big step.
The president referred to opposition groups that are putting “obstacles to the peace process”, by stigmatizing the negotiating table and describing it as a legitimization of the guerrillas.
He mentioned, in particular, former president Alvaro Uribe, who meets with the U.S. extreme right to say that we are giving the state and the country to the guerrillas, that we are guaranteeing impunity and the country’s military forces have been reduced by 70 percent.
via PL