Quayle Appeals to Peru for Help in War on Drugs : Policy: His remarks, however, show that the U.S. view of the battle differs from that of the troubled Latin country.

Nothing seemed more remote from the reality of Peru on Wednesday than Vice President Dan Quayle’s plea for the country to join America’s war on drugs.

The morning papers brimmed with photos of bombings and demonstrations and looting in Lima. Peruvians waited fearfully for news of the soaring price increases that the new government of President Alberto Fujimori planned to announce in an austerity program. And a state of emergency had been declared in 11 cities, including Lima, to prevent the police from going out on strike during a time of anti-austerity protests.

Quayle himself, on a swift tour of the Andean countries, had driven past the bleak, dust-clouded hovels of some of the worst slums of Lima that morning to visit orphans in the care of a Presbyterian church linked to his own Presbyterian congregation in northern Virginia.

Quayle was not unmindful of these depressing problems as he spoke to Peruvian reporters in the presidential palace after meeting with President Fujimori.

“My No. 1 objective is to show the strong partnership and mutual respect that we have for one another,” the Vice President said. “Having a partnership is not having an anti-narcotics campaign. It is economic development. It is how we’re going to implement President Bush’s Andean initiative, his enterprise for the Americas. And it is a far more expanded agenda than an anti-narcotics program.”

But, after citing the need for economic development in Latin America, Quayle could not resist proclaiming some of the standard White House rhetoric about the war on drugs.

“An anti-narcotics program is critical,” he said. “It’s a must. It’s a must for the people of Peru. You’re losing your children in the cities and in the mountains and in the country just like we are losing our children in the United States. It is of mutual interest to both countries to continue a strong campaign against narcotics drug dealing, drug growing and drug trafficking.”

But this plea seemed to have less relevance to Peruvian journalists than a pointed follow-up question about what, if anything, Quayle proposed as an alternative crop for the Peruvian farmers of the Huallaga Valley, who now produce more coca leaf than anyone else in the world.

The question, however, was mangled in translation, and the Vice President did not have to face up to an issue that is far more meaningful for Peru than that of children dying from drugs. Peru’s vital role in drugs is one of production, not consumption.

It was probably inevitable that the Vice President would seem somewhat out of step with the reality of Peru. His tour of the Andean countries of Colombia, Peru and Bolivia in less than three days demonstrated often that the White House view of the war on drugs is somewhat different from that of the Andean countries.

Quayle came on the trip armed with a briefing paper prepared by William Bennett’s Office of Narcotics Control that explained how the Administration’s “Andean counternarcotics implementation plan,” with its promise of military assistance to cooperating countries, was aimed, in large part, toward shoring up a political commitment of these countries to fighting drug traffickers.

But it was evident when Quayle showed up in Bogota for the inauguration of Cesar Gaviria as president of Colombia that even this staunch ally could not stand completely with the Bush Administration.

Polls and newspaper editorials in recent months have shown that Colombians have grown weary of the violence from the war between the government and the drug barons. The past year has seen the assassination of three presidential candidates, the murder of 12 journalists and newspaper owners, the bombing of two newspapers, the destruction of an airliner in flight and the murder of hundreds of civilians, soldiers and police officers, resulting in a homicide rate that is now seven times higher than that of the United States.

There has been constant public pressure on Gaviria to negotiate with the drug barons and give in to their demand to stop the policy of extraditing captured suspects to the United States.

In their meeting in Bogota, neither Quayle nor Gaviria brought up the issue of extraditions--perhaps, as a member of the Vice President’s staff put it, because “neither wanted to hear what the other was going to say.”

In the end, Quayle told a news conference that the United States still expected the extraditions to continue, and President Gaviria, in his inauguration speech, opened the door wider than ever to an understanding with the drug cartel about extraditions.

In the address, which sounded tough on drugs in all other respects, Gaviria insisted that it was up to his personal discretion under the constitution to allow or refuse extradition. Before he could really use this discretion, the president said, “It is required that the terror must first disappear.” This was interpreted as a promise that he might reconsider the extradition policy if the traffickers stop their killings.

Like his predecessor, Alan Garcia, Fujimori has refused to sign the U.S. counternarcotics implementation plan, insisting that the real problems demand economic aid for eradicating coca production.