No kidding

Venezuela in cahoots with Colombian rebels on drugs: US

WASHINGTON — The United States directly accused Venezuelan security forces on Monday of assisting Colombian guerrillas with drug trafficking.
The government of President Hugo Chavez, long a thorn in Washington's side, "does not cooperate consistently with the United States and other countries to reduce the flow of cocaine through Venezuela," the US State Department said.
"There is strong evidence that some elements of Venezuela's security forces directly assist these FTOs (foreign terrorist organizations)," it said in its annual report on international drug trafficking.
The document identified the groups as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN), leftist guerrillas long accused of protecting drug trafficking operations to finance their operations.
Labeling Venezuela a major drug-transit country, the report said drug flows had increased sharply last year to the United States, Europe and West Africa via the South American country.
Venezuela severed cooperation with the US Drug Enforcement Administration in 2006 amid deteriorating relations with Washington.
"You see an extraordinary path of particularly aviation exports out of the Venezuelan area next to the border of Colombia," State Department counternarcotics chief David Johnson told reporters.
He said that although Washington had maintained contacts with Venezuelan officials on the scourge of drug trafficking, there have been no "significant efforts to stop that traffic."
Drug trafficking has "increased the level of corruption, crime and violence in Venezuela," according to the report.
"The lack of effective criminal prosecutions, politicization of investigations and corruption undermine public confidence in the judicial system."
Yet it also noted that the United States was ready to resume counternarcotics cooperation with the Chavez government, calling the return of ambassadors from both countries to their posts in June an "opportunity."
"The State Department's annual charge that Venezuela is not cooperating in the fight against drugs is purely political," Venezuela's Ambassador to Washington Bernardo Alvarez said on Thursday ahead of the report's publication.
He defended his country's "unequivocal" commitment to the war on drugs, saying Venezuelan authorities increased drug seizures by 11 percent last year.