MIAMI, (Reuters) – Venezuela has shown little  interest in curbing the number of illegal flights hauling  Colombian cocaine from its territory for the United States and  Europe, a U.S. official said yesterday.

“There’s not a whole lot of evidence that there are strong  measures being taken by the Venezuelans to deal with this,”  said David Johnson, the assistant secretary of state who heads  the U.S. Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement  Affairs.

“We have a challenge in getting any really productive,  cooperative drug control efforts with the Venezuelans to  address this,” Johnson told Reuters.

Traffickers in Colombia, many of whom are involved with  FARC rebels, have long been known to use neighboring Venezuela  as a transit route to run drugs through the Caribbean, Africa,  Central America and Mexico to the United States and Europe.

But Johnson, who spoke on the sidelines of a meeting in  Miami of the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission, said  the problem had grown worse, five years after the government of  populist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez ended cooperation  with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

“It’s certainly a factual concern that there are increasing  incidences,” he said, referring to radar tracks of suspected  drug flights originating just inside Venezuela’s porous border  with Colombia, the world’s leading cocaine producer.

Johnson said there was a “significant movement” of cocaine  out of Argentina and Brazil destined for Europe as well, adding  that it was smuggled either directly or through West Africa.
But most of the Colombian cocaine smuggled out of South  America by air for the U.S. market was now moving out of  Venezuela, he said.

“Almost none of the air (smuggling) is originating in  Colombia,” Johnson said.

Johnson stopped short of repeating past accusations that  high level former officials in the government of Chavez, a  fierce U.S. critic, were involved in drug trafficking with  Colombia’s FARC rebels.

But he said its role in the drug trade marked “a  significant challenge” for transshipment countries in West  Africa and the Caribbean, especially the Dominican Republic and  Haiti, as well as for the United States and Europe.