The US will provide training and equipment to law enforcement agencies in Bolivia, as part of the fight against drug trafficking, under a bilateral agreement, of the first kind signed by the governments of the two states after nearly twenty years, the US embassy in La Pas announced yesterday Tuesday.
In 2008, Evo Morales, then president of Bolivia, a country ranked third world in terms of cocaine production, discontinued diplomatic relations with the U.S. and expelled the US drug prosecution agency (DEA) from the territory.
But the current centre-right President Rodrigo Pass has moved on to a dramatic change in the country's foreign policy, after twenty years of governance by the socialists, attempted approach to the US and international financial institutions.
"The US will work closely with the Bolivian government," they will provide "education, equipment and other forms of support" to conduct investigations and dismantle drug trafficking circuits, prosecute economic crimes, and increase transparency in the police and judicial system of the Andean state, the American embassy in La Pas said in a statement.
Washington pledged to spend $20 million on this strategy, the implementation of which will be directed by the international anti-drug and law enforcement agency (INL), the State Department's address.
Although both countries have expressed their will to proceed to the full restoration of high-level bilateral diplomatic relations, they have not yet named and exchanged ambassadors.
The DEA has not officially opened its Bolivian office before; However La Pass has announced that the agency is working with Bolivian authorities.
Bolivia joined earlier this year the US President Donald Trump's " Shield of America" initiative, with a declared goal of fighting drug trafficking and transnational organised crime.