<a href=www.thescotsman.co.uk>thescotsman.co.uk Sat 10 May 2003

GETHIN CHAMBERLAIN THE drug smugglers were 4,500 miles into their voyage across the Atlantic from Colombia, making good progress at a speed of 20 knots , when it became clear that their plan had gone horribly wrong.

Packed into every available space on their high-speed vessel, a former German motor torpedo boat dating from the Second World War, was 3.6 tonnes of cocaine. On the streets of mainland Europe and the UK, it would have been worth £250 million, more than enough to compensate for the discomforts of the trip.

But instead of a clear run to the Spanish coast, a mere 420 miles away, they found their way blocked by the Royal Navy frigate HMS Cumberland and the Royal Fleet Auxiliary supply ship Wave Knight.

As they looked closer, they could make out the small rigid inflatables, launched by the British ships, bouncing across the waves towards them. Getting closer by the second, each one was packed with heavily armed boarding parties. Above the waves, two Lynx helicopters, which had taken off from the decks of the ships, were swooping towards them.

They quickly realised that the situation was hopeless. Switching off their engine, they waited for the boarding parties to arrive. They did not have to wait long.

Within moments, the helicopters were overhead, ropes dropping on to the deck of the 140ft-long craft and armed men swarming down them. Then the inflatables were alongside, and more men poured on to the boat .

Among them were British and Spanish customs officers, who had helped to co-ordinate the carefully-planned operation. As one naval source observed later, while they couldn’t comment on how they knew the boat would be where it was, they would have had to be very lucky simply to stumble across such a small boat in such a large ocean.

What the boarding party found was the largest cocaine haul ever recovered in European waters. Its seizure brought to £1.5 billion the running total of drugs seized by the Royal Navy in the last five years.

The smugglers’ boat, the ‘Cork’, had collected the drugs in Colombia, hoping to deliver them to the European mainland, where about one fifth of the cargo was destined for the UK. There was so much cocaine on board that some of the crew were sleeping on the bridge because their bunks were so full. They were only 16 hours from their destination when the navy swooped.

The commanding officer of the Cumberland, Captain Mike Mansergh, was understandably delighted with the success of Thursday’s operation.

"Both ships - and we had two naval helicopters with us - managed to converge on the vessel and, to its great surprise, we were suddenly there in the middle of the Atlantic, so they stopped very quickly," he said.

"This enabled us to put Spanish customs officers on board the boat. They were certainly quite surprised and there was no resistance."

He added: "It was an enormous haul and we are delighted we have managed to stop that amount of cocaine entering the streets of Europe."

For the Cumberland, however, such an operation was hardly something new. It had only just returned from operational duties in the Gulf, where it had carried out more than 100 similar boardings of vessels suspected of breaking UN embargoes on trade with Iraq.

The captain of the Honduras-registered Cork is from the Dominican Republic and the crew members are Greek, Customs said. All eight men aboard the high-speed boat were arrested by Spanish customs officers.

The Cumberland was yesterday escorting the smugglers’ vessel to Spain, where they would be able to establish precisely how much cocaine had been seized.

NAVAL VICTORIES FIGHTING DRUGS

THE largest seizure of drugs by the Royal Navy was in 1999, when armed sailors from HMS Marlborough recovered cocaine worth £1 billion in two operations four days apart.

Four tonnes of cocaine was recovered from the Panamanian-registered freighter MV China Breeze in the Caribbean and another four tonnes were found on the Panamanian freighter MV Castor. Later the same year, the Royal Navy recovered two tonnes of cocaine valued at £135 million from the Panama-registered cargo ship MV Adriatik in an operation in the Caribbean, north of Venezuela.

Last year, the Royal Navy frigate HMS Grafton seized 750 kg of cocaine worth an estimated £100 million from a fishing boat in the Caribbean after a tip off from the US Drug Enforcement Administration.

Yesterday’s seizure was the second-largest by Spanish Customs. In July 1999, 7.6 tonnes of cocaine was seized aboard a freighter.

INSTITUTE OF THE AMERICAS JEFFREY DAVIDOW Former U.S. Ambassador Jeffrey Davidow named president of the Institute of the Americas. (Spanish) Ex Embajador De Estados Unidos Jeffrey Davidow Designado Presidente Del Instituto De Las Américas. (PRNewsFoto)[AS] SAN DIEGO, CA USA 05/09/2003     SAN DIEGO, May 9 /<a href=www.prnewswire.com>PRNewswire/ -- The Institute of the Americas has elected the State Department's highest ranking diplomat and its most senior expert on Latin America to fill the office of President effective June 1, 2003.

Davidow will lead the Institute of the Americas, focusing on outreach and creating awareness of the Institute's programs.  He will join the Institute during a period of rapid growth, renewed purpose and increased Institute participation.  Davidow will report directly to the Institute's distinguished inter-American Board of Directors.

Prior to joining the Institute, Davidow served as visiting fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, and was a visiting scholar at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies.  Davidow's State Department career spanned several decades, most recently serving as the U.S. Ambassador to Mexico ('98-'02); Assistant Secretary of State for Latin America ('96-'98), Ambassador to Venezuela ('93-'96); Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Africa ('90-'93), and Ambassador to Zambia ('88-'90) -- where he worked closely on matters related to the eventual change of government in South Africa.

Davidow was declared a "Career Ambassador," a distinction given to just three individuals in the U.S.  "This is not only a person with in-depth knowledge of Latin America, but he is a brilliant mind who has excellent managerial skills and has worked diligently to improve the operations of the U.S. Department of State," said Theodore E. Gildred, former Ambassador to Argentina.

Davidow holds a bachelor's degree in American history from the University of Massachusetts, and a master's degree in American studies from the University of Minnesota.

"We conducted a thorough search for an individual who could carry the Institute to new heights, increase its exposure and broaden our programs," said Gaston Luken, Institute Board Chairman.

On May 20th, the Institute of Americas is celebrating its 20th anniversary and will dedicate a new addition to its headquarters on the campus of the University of California, San Diego.  The Institute is a California non-profit organization exempt from taxation under the Internal Revenue Code.  The mission of the Institute is to be a significant catalyst for promoting development and integration, emphasizing the role of the private sector, as a means to improve the economic, political, and social well being of the people of the Americas.

For more information about the Institute or its programs, go to http://www.iamericas.org or call (858) 453-5560.

townonline.com Friday, May 9, 2003

The American Academy of Physician Assistants has selected Cameron R. Macauley of Allston as the recipient of its 2003 Humanitarian Physician Assistant of the Year Award. The award will be presented May 21 in New Orleans at AAPA's 31st annual Physician Assistant Conference.

Since 1984, Macauley has provided medical care, surgical care and health education to people in six countries on three continents. He has learned to speak, read and write five languages: Bahasa, Crioulo, Portuguese, Yanomami, and Fulani, as well as to converse in a sixth, Khmer.

During his career, Macauley has opened and supervised outpatient community clinics in Guinea-Bissau, Brazil and on the Thai-Cambodian border, and provided immunization services in southern Angola, an area that had not had such a program for 10 years. He also supervised the collection and analysis of more than 10,000 blood smears for malaria during an epidemic in the Brazilian Amazon and coordinated medical relief efforts during a cholera epidemic in South Central Angola in 1994.

Macauley has designed and taught courses for nurses, surgical technicians, health agents, vaccinators and microscopists in places where such programs had not previously existed and created course materials in native languages. "In 17 years I have taught over 1,000 students, always in their own languages," said Macauley. Most recently, he established the first training program for Yanomami indigenous health agents in Brazil, where he also trained the first Yanomami malaria microscopists.

"Cameron recognized that education is a fundamental activity in the fight for human rights," wrote Dr. Sandra Gomes de Almeida, from Sao Paulo, Brazil, in a letter of recommendation.

"The self-esteem and ambition that Cameron inspired in his students will continue to make an enormous difference in their future and will, I believe, shape the grassroots health education in Brazil."

Macauley has also advocated for human rights outside of his clinical work and teaching. In 1994, while living and providing medical care in Angola, he launched a protest against local police and military staff who were illegally conscripting health care workers for military service. In 1986, while managing an outpatient clinic that served 30,000 refugees on the Thai-Cambodian border, he led protests against human rights violations at the Suan Phlu Immigration Detention Center in Bangkok.

Macauley says that one of the greatest challenges he has found in his work is "overcoming the lack of motivation of students due to chronic poverty and in some cases war, to inspire them to learn how to provide basic health care services." He is currently working with Physician Assistants for Global Health, an AAPA-recognized special interest group, to encourage PAs to work overseas in humanitarian assistance, as well as researching cost-effective malaria control strategies for Amerindian groups in Venezuela and Brazil.

The Humanitarian Physician Assistant of the Year Award, supported by Pfizer Inc., honors a physician assistant who has demonstrated an outstanding commitment to human rights and exemplifies the PA profession's philosophy of providing accessible and quality health care in geographic locations inside and outside of the United States. Macauley will be presented a crystal PAragon Award and a check for $2,500. A matching contribution will be given in his name to Cultural Survival.

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Friday, May 09, 2003 By: VenAmCham

The Group of Friends concluded its visit to Venezuela with a communique making it clear that an electoral solution is needed to overcome the serious conflicts that prevail in Venezuelan society.

The group of six countries that support the work of OAS Secretary General Cesar Gaviria urged the participants in the negotiating round table to make strenuous efforts to overcome continuing differences between the parties. Brazilian Deputy Foreign Minister Gilberto Savoia spoke on the group's behalf, "stress(ing) the importance of an agreement as an indispensable step to strengthening trust and achieving a constructive political and electoral climate, as well as laying the groundwork for a reconciliation among the Venezuelans."

The group also issued a warning about violence and freedom of expression, reaffirming the importance of "a full implementation of the agreement against violence and for peace and democracy, as well as the need to maintain respect for freedom of expression, which must be exercised by the public and private media in a responsible and balanced fashion."

They also pointed out that the Venezuelans are responsible for their own destiny: "Venezuela's problems can, and must be resolved by the Venezuelans, in the framework of the country's Constitution and laws." But the prospect of the negotiating round table's dissolution raises doubts about what kind of agreement the government and the opposition could achieve.

The Venezuelan government clearly stated its intentions to the group of friends: putting an end to the negotiating round table moderated by the OAS Secretary General with the support of the Carter Center and the UNDP and moving the debate to the National Assembly (AN).

To that end the Group of Friends proposed signing a preliminary agreement at the round table without delay, and returning Cesar Gaviria to his office in Washington. The opposition takes the position that the government is doing everything it can to block the recall referendum against President Hugo Chavez Frias, and believes the Venezuelan people in the streets will be the ones to enforce the constitutional provisions.

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Friday, May 09, 2003 By: VenAmCham

The Venezuelan Revolution's plans do not include a return to free currency convertibility ... Cadivi president Edgar Hernandez Behrens has told national radio and television that foreign exchange restrictions will not be lifted in the near future. He said that once the current stage is completed, Venezuela will move towards "a comprehensive exchange control system such as many countries have, to make rational and efficient use of foreign exchange."

The official responsible for distributing the Republic's dollars indicated that one of the basic goals is "to stimulate and strengthen national tourism" and give priority to imports of raw materials and inputs that will cause domestic production to grow "over and above the imports of finished products."

Economist Luis Zambrano Sequin says that if PDVSA and foreign reserve statistics are true, there's no reason to limit foreign exchange purchases. He asserts that there is a political component to current policy. As reported in El Universal, the anti-globalization movement, of which the Chavez administration is a participant, firmly believes that free currency exchange is an imposition of "neo-liberalism" and has a deadly effect on developing economies.