Just this month, our drug enforcement agency opened an office in Beijing, and soon Chinese counternarcotics experts will be working out of Washington.

American officials, including a former drug tsar, have publicly worried about having a “narco state” as their neighbour.

China says it will step up drug enforcement efforts during the Olympic Games in Beijing in August.

The operation also recovered 11 Colombian police and soldiers, and three American defense contractors, who were seized in 2003 when their plane crashed during a drug surveillance flight.

Thirty percent of all drugs smuggled into the U.S. come through the Caribbean, so the U.S. government provides drug-fighting assistance to many of its southern neighbors.