UK Begins Withholding Key Drug Trafficking Intelligence from the US: Report
The United States’ closest ally since World War II has reportedly decided it’s not such an ally in President Donald Trump’s war against drug trafficking.
The leftist government of U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has stopped sharing intelligence about drug smuggling in the Caribbean in response to the U.S. military’s destruction of suspected drug boats, according to CNN.
Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio denied the reports, but indicated the Trump administration’s position was unchanged anyway.
On Tuesday, CNN cited unnamed “sources familiar with the matter” in a report about a British “pause” in intelligence sharing.
The British Embassy in Washington declined to comment, as did the White House, according to CNN.
On Wednesday, NBC News reported that the U.S. military actions were a topic of discussion at a Group of Seven meeting of industrialized nations in Canada.
Rubio, however, said he was not aware of any complaints.
“Not with me — no one raised it,” he said, according to NBC. “It didn’t come up once.”
And he didn’t sound too concerned about it.
“Again, nothing has changed or happened that [has] impeded in any way our ability to do what we’re doing, nor are we asking anyone to help us with what we’re doing — in any realm. And that includes military.”
Military action against suspected drug boats in the Caribbean started in September, with strikes mostly in the Caribbean but also in the Pacific Ocean.
In the U.K., the London-based newspaper The Times on Wednesday noted that the U.K. controls territories in the Caribbean and cited unnamed sources as it reported:
“In an unprecedented move, intelligence gathered from British assets in the region is no longer being passed to the Americans because the UK does not want to be complicit” in the U.S. operations.
The attacks on what the Trump administration describes as drug trafficking vessels have been denounced by Democrats and some Republicans.
Republican Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska joined Democrats in trying to pass a Senate resolution last week aimed at putting an end to the strikes, according to Fox News. The resolution failed.
Governments from abroad have also attacked the policy. The United Nations High Commmissioner for Human Rights has called the strikes “extrajudicial killing,” as CBS News reported Oct. 31.
In his statements to reporters, Rubio sounded a defiant note.
“I don’t think that the European Union gets to determine what international law is. What they certainly don’t get to determine is how the United States defends its national security,” Rubio said, according to NBC.
“The United States is under attack from organized criminal, narco-terrorists in our hemisphere, and the president is responding in the defense of our country.”
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