E/CN.7/1988/2 (Part II)
ge 22
137.
Several representatives indicated that law enforcement co-operation should be conducted through the national centralized co-ordinating agency established pursuant to article 35 of the 1961 Convention and article 21 of the 1971 Convention. In order to cover both countries where such centralized agencies had been established, as well as those where the exchange of information and co-operation involved several governmental services, it was agreed to refer in subparagraph 1(a) to "competent national agencies and services".
138. The Group considered that the type of information to be exchanged should not be itemized as any listing was bound to be incomplete and to become obsolete. It was therefore agreed that subparagraphs (a) (i)-(iv) of paragraph 1 should be deleted.
139. Some representatives referred to the importance of the links between illicit traffic and other organized criminal activities and proposed the inclusion of a subparagraph covering this aspect. Several representatives expressed the view that the Group should refrain from going beyond its mandate which was to draft a convention concerning specifically the suppression of illicit drug trafficking and could not widen the scope of that convention by the inclusion of the proposed subparagraph. It was however agreed, as a compromise solution, that the exchange of information between Parties on illicit traffic could relate also to links with other criminal activities if the Parties concerned deemed it appropriate. A phrase in that sense was added at the end of subparagraph 1(a). One representative expressed disappointment at the unsatisfactory compromise which had been reached. He again emphasized that his country considered the question of links with other criminal activities to be of central importance to the illicit traffic in narcotic drugs. The international community was missing the great opportunity offered by the preparation of the draft convention to fight the illicit traffic effectively in a real-life environment.
140. In order to spell out more precisely the kind of co-operation that was envisaged in subparagraph 1(b) of the preliminary draft, one representative proposed to divide the text into two separate subparagraphs covering, on the one hand, co-operation between the law enforcement agencies of several countries at the investigative stage prior to the initiation of judicial proceedings and, on the other hand, the transfer of samples of controlled substances for analytical and investigative purposes. The Group agreed to the proposed revised formulation.
141.
The introductory sentence to paragraph 2 was amended so as to make it clear that it would be for each Party individually to devise "specific" training programmes for its respective law enforcement agencies involved in the suppression of the illicit traffic.
142. Subparagraph 2(a) was amended so that the focus of the training programmes would be not only on the detection of the illicit traffic but also on its suppression.
143. It was agreed to replace the terms "laundering" and "proceeds", which appeared in subparagraphs (d) and (e) by the terms "concealment" and "property" in brackets, pending a fully accepted definition of these terms or their eventual replacement by other concepts.