More attention is to be paid to choking off trafficking of drugs and weapons between the Caribbean and the United Kingdom by reducing the demand for these, Minister of Home Affairs, Ronald Gajraj, says.

At present, he said, the arrangements place emphasis on the supply reduction aspect of the illegal trade.

However, funding to deal with the problem of trafficking in illegal drugs, arms and ammunition is drying up.

In a brief interview with Stabroek News after the end of the Third Caribbean/United Kingdom Forum held in Georgetown last week, Gajraj said that the conference emphasised concerns not only about narcotics going north, but about illegal arms and ammunition coming south.

Referring to narcotic drugs and illegal arms and ammunition as Siamese twins, he said that in the circumstances the arrangements in place to deal with narco-trafficking were satisfactory though there was scope for more mechanisms to be put in place.

Woodrow Smith, principal director with responsibility for Security and Narcotics in the Jamaican Ministry of National Security and Justice, who attended the conference, told Stabroek News that there was a scaling down of programmes by the United Nations Drug Control Programme and the European Union to counter drug trafficking in the region and the Caribbean was seeking assistance from the UK in developing mechanisms to counter the scourge. The EU closed its programme in the region in March.

Smith said that all the initiatives that unfolded in the Barbados 1996 plan of action for dealing with the problem have, more or less, been accomplished.

There was a high-level meeting in December in Trinidad and Tobago but no firm commitment was made as to what the region could garner or what the international community could do to contribute to drug control activity in the region, he said.

Smith said that one could understand that the international community and donor agencies have many more countries to deal with now, since former Soviet Union states became independent countries and the United States and the United Nations now have to divide the cake with those countries as well.

He felt that the United Kingdom was prepared to come up with some assistance for the region but had so far not indicated clearly how it would do so.

The UK, he said, also indicated its commitment to ensuring that arms trafficking to the region was slashed as far as possible.

He noted that assistance in the eradication of marijuana in Jamaica, a producer of the narcotic, was drastically reduced and the trafficking of hard drugs from the island also compounded this. Hard drugs include cocaine from South America and more recently Jamaica has been seeing the importation of `ecstasy' from the Netherlands through the Netherlands Antilles.

"The methods of trafficking are varied," he said. "Commercial importers who go to Panama, Curacao, the Cayman Islands and Colombia are also involved. They not only bring back their commodities but even illegal drugs. With the illegal drugs come illegal firearms and so over the years we have developed a gun culture."

In Jamaica, he said, some 2.5 to three persons are killed each day by violent means with most being killed by the gun. Last year more than 1,000 persons were killed by violent means. Violent means involved drug-trafficking activities, gang wars, fights for turf, robbery under arms and extortion.

Because of these problems, Smith said, Jamaica unfurled a number of crime plans, the last being in January by the Minister of National Security. Among the plans is to pay for the handing in of guns and the Jamaican government is paying as much as J$75,000 (approximately US$1,500) for high-powered weapons. More is paid if it is proven the weapon was used in a murder and more if the person who used the gun in a murder was apprehended.

While he could not say if this plan was working, he said that over the last two weeks there had been a lull in activities on the part of the gangs. The police, too, he said, have been very active.

He noted that two or three members of a criminal gang that had been intimidating persons and was said to be responsible for several deaths had been killed by the police in a confrontation after the police found a tape with records of the gang. The gang leader was on the air in response to a request from a talk show host. From all indications, he said he was not prepared to give himself up because of a notion that he would not be given a fair trial.

Asked whether Jamaica like Guyana would sign a prison transfer agreement with the United Kingdom, Smith said: "I don't think it is an issue the Jamaica government has ever considered. As it is we encounter a lot of problems with persons deported out of the USA and UK. Oftentimes these are persons who developed their criminal skills from those countries. The major crimes are committed by persons deported from these countries."