The Washington Post reported last week on steps taken by Venezuela to crack down on its growing cocaine trade.

Facing criticism that cocaine trafficking is out of control, Venezuela’s government this year has embarked on an aggressive program to track drug-smuggling planes and destroy clandestine airstrips used by Colombian drug clans, Venezuelan drug enforcement and military officials said in a series of interviews.In what appears to be a sharp shift from last year, Venezuelan aircraft and munitions experts have destroyed 157 dirt strips here in the grassy plains state of Apure, most of them in the last two weeks. The government has installed three new Chinese-made radar stations and plans to put up seven others that will completely cover Venezuelan airspace and permit authorities to track unidentified flights originating in neighboring Colombia.

However, the United States questions the commitment of the Venezuela Government in its fight against illegal drugs.

John Walters, director of the White House drug policy office, said he had doubts about the commitment of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s administration to dismantling trafficking operations.

U.S. officials have been particularly concerned since Colombian authorities released documents to The Washington Post on March 6 that appeared to show ties between Chávez and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, a guerrilla group the United States considers a cocaine cartel. Anti-drug officials in Washington and Colombia have also said in interviews that high-ranking Venezuelan military officers have collaborated with Colombian drug kingpins, providing some with Venezuelan government identification cards and protection.

“If you want to see what makes a consequential difference, you look at what’s been going on in Colombia — real arrests, going after traffickers, infrastructure, really seizing,” Walters said by telephone from Washington. “Going after the transnational elements of the trade. I have yet to see that kind of transformation on the part of the Venezuelans.”

The United States estimates that up to 250 tons of cocaine — more than a third of what Colombia produced — passed through Venezuela last year, more than double the amount trafficked in the 1990s.

That has prompted concern that Venezuela, though always a route for smuggling, has become a major sieve, despite the $6 billion the United States has spent since 2000 to fight drugs and Marxist guerrillas in Colombia.

“What we’re now seeing is a threat to our investment, a threat to Plan Colombia,” said a senior U.S. Senate staff member who helps shape Latin American policy, speaking on condition that he not be identified by name because of the sensitivity of the issue. “It’s the preeminent issue with Venezuela.”

The Venezuelans bristle at such characterizations and say it is they — not the Americans — who are on the front lines of the drug war.

“We’re between the biggest producer of cocaine and the biggest consumer of cocaine, and we’re the problem?” Reverol said.

Globally, the illegal drug trade is a $321.6 billion industry.