On Capitol Hill, lawmakers called for overhauling the report card process that often embarrasses U.S. allies. Cambodia and Haiti were decertified but received a national security waiver of economic penalties. Nigeria and Paraguay, in the same category last year as Cambodia and Haiti, moved up to fully certified. In addition to Mexico, Colombia, Nigeria and Paraguay, the other certified countries were the Bahamas, Bolivia, Brazil, China, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, India, Jamaica, Laos, Pakistan, Panama, Peru, Thailand, Venezuela and Vietnam. The certification process has been denounced in America by those who consider it counterproductive and by foreign countries embarrassed by their grades and annoyed at being judged by the world's biggest drug consuming-nation.
Certification is more than an affront to Mexico and to other countries.
President Bush has endorsed a move in Congress to set aside the certification process, and he told Fox during a Feb. 16 visit to Mexico that he would tout Fox's anti-drug efforts to U.S. lawmakers. The report did praise Mexico's aggressive eradication program, saying that effort, plus drought in its principal drug cultivation areas, resulted in record low levels of opium poppy production. The decertification of Afghanistan came despite a recent report by U.N. drug control officers that the ruling Taliban militia had virtually wiped out opium production since banning poppy cultivation in July. While acknowledging the effort, the State Department said it was too early to assess its effectiveness. Regarding Colombia, the world's largest cocaine producer, the report said a U.S.-backed aerial eradication program successfully treated about 116,090 acres of coca and 22,230 acres of opium poppy last year.