Andrés Pastrana, Former President of Colombia
“Narcotrafficking is spreading to Europe and Africa”

The Arab world is experiencing unseen political transformations, how is it perceived in Latin America and more precisely in Colombia?

I think very positively. Because as you will know in Latin America, we had tyrants and dictatorship for many many years and that was a common denominator for the region in the 70’s and the 80’s and now you have democracy all around the region. Promoting democracy in Arab countries is very important for us. These changes will impact positively the people. We want to see prosperity.  Like in Latin America, many of these countries are very rich but at the same time, you have some of the highest levels of poverty in the world. For all these new governments, it is a big challenge.  You cannot achieve democracy from one day to another. We heard about the support of the EU, the US and Latin America.

To what extent Latin America is involved in supporting these democratic transitions?

With our own experience, I think we could be helpful to Arab countries. We ourselves dealt with transitions from autocratic regimes to democracies. In Colombia, we have been a democracy for a hundred years, just for four years we experienced a military coup. But in the region in general, we have been strengthening democracy and we have pushed for decentralization, giving municipalities real power.  There are a lot of experiences from the Latin American region that we can share with the Arab world. For instance, popular election of mayors and governors are successful examples in the case of Colombia that we could be shared. We are ready to give the support to Arab countries so that they can build their democracies.

You are speaking tomorrow in your session about international security, what are the current challenges at the global level in your view?

We have new challenges, new threats. Terrorism is one of them. You know what happens in the case of Colombia: we have guerrillas on one side, on the other side we have narcotrafficking, now we have narco-terrorism. Now you can see that guerrillas are financed from the drugs.  You can witness the same situation in Afghanistan, the Talibans are financed with heroin. The Moroccan Foreign Affairs Minister at the opening ceremony pointed out the relationship between Al Qaeda and Latin American cartels. So these are new treats that worry us because there is a lot of money involved.  The drug business is the second largest business in the world. We used to have a problem in our region, Colombia was producing drugs and the US was the largest consumer of drugs and now it has spread to Europe, with drugs transiting through Africa. Europe has become a new market.  The price of one kilo of cocaine in the streets of New York is 30 000 dollars, while in Europe it is 90 000 euros. Therefore, there are new actors who are trying to put in danger institutions and democracies around the world. Are we prepared for that ? Is there enough cooperation between states to act against it?

Is there regional security cooperation?

In Latin America, there is close cooperation. We also work closely with the United States. Cooperation is something that I started, it was called ‘Plan Colombia’ and it was based on co-responsibility.  There were three issues on which we worked – amplifying our armed forces, strengthening our institutions and investing in the poorer areas more particularly those producing cocaine. We wanted to give them alternatives to avoid them from being in the illegal side and put them on the legal side. Our purpose was to fight narco-terrorism. You are aware of the problems Mexico encounters. I am very worried that it can be displaced to other smaller states in Central America that are more fragile. The same thing is happening with the same kind of crimes in Africa and in the Southern part of Spain. So we need to cooperate. How can exchange information? How can we work together to fight a common enemy? Countries that are used to transit drugs end up ultimately in being consumers themselves.

South-South cooperation is key topic at the MEDays Forum, do you think that strengthening it could be a solution to the current world economic crisis?

We need to foster south-south relations. We had the perception that Africa and the Middle East were far away but now we are very close, we are all integrated in the same economy.

We could do a lot of business. But there is no south-south commercial integration as far as Latin America and Africa/Middle East regions are concerned. So we need to integrate more. Markets here in Africa and the Middle East are huge markets.

But how many Latin American are here at the Forum for instance? Two? Three? MEDays is very important as an initiative in bringing the South together. We should be more involved in this kind of forum that can help us strengthen our commercial ties. I believe in lobby diplomacy.  Imagine how many ministers from Africa you have here and what could be done if there was a stronger Latin American presence at the governmental level. It is something we need to definitely work on in the future.