US gives Taiwan mixed review on combating drugs

The US gave Taiwan a clean report card for its efforts to wipe out the trafficking of narcotics and chemicals used to make methamphetamine last year, but expressed regret that infighting in the legislature had blocked passage of important laws to fight money laundering, drug trafficking and terrorist financing.

In its latest annual report on the global drug trade, the US State Department said that the narcotics flow from Taiwan to the US had virtually dried up, partly as a result of close cooperation between Taiwanese authorities and the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

However, the report did point to an increase in domestic use and seizures in Taiwan of psychotropic drugs such as ketamine and ecstacy.

PAT ON THE BACK

In a related action, US President George W. Bush gave Taiwan a pat on the back for its efforts to stem the trafficking in chemicals used to make methamphetamine, a major psychotropic drug.

Taiwan is one of the top five exporters of pseudoephedrine, which is one chemical used to make methamphetamine.

In a report mandated by Congress, the US president certified that Taiwan, along with the other countries, had cooperated with the US and had taken other actions to "achieve full compliance with the goals and objectives" of the main UN convention against drugs and psychotropics.

Countries failing that test face the cutoff of half of US aid funds.

However, Taiwan received only US$1.2 million in US grants and loans in 2005, so Bush's latest certification was largely symbolic.

In its praise for Taiwan's anti-drug efforts, the State Department report gives credit to cooperation under the 2002 mutual legal assistance agreement between the two countries.

In the report, the authors make repeated reference to Taiwan's voluntary commitment to comply with UN anti-drug treaties even though Taiwan is not a member of the UN.

These include the 1988 UN Drug Convention and the UN International Convention for the Suppression of the financing of Terrorism.

LEGISLATURE CRITICIZED

On the legislative front, however, the US criticized the failure to enact several needed laws.

"Taiwan's Legislative Yuan [LY] again failed to enact any new counternarcotics legislation in 2006," the department's report said, "due to protracted infighting between the two major political blocs in the LY."

"Legislation that would permit the use of confidential sources of information and enable undercover operations is no longer being considers, and a proposal aimed at establishing a unified drug enforcement agency modeled after the US DEA remains stalled by the infighting," the report said.

It also noted that the government drafted a counter-terrorism action law in 2003, but the law was still under review by lawmakers as of last July.

The proposed law would explicitly designate terrorism as a major crime, as well as enable Taiwanese authorities to seize terrorist assets, even without a criminal case.

MONEY LAUNDERING

The State Department called on the legislature to pass these laws and other laws cracking down on underground banks.

Despite the gains Taiwan has made against international money laundering, however, the department kept Taiwan on its list of countries "of primary concern," along with 58 jurisdictions, including China, Hong Kong and the US itself, out of the 210 countries covered in the report.