QUESTION: Venezuela is complaining about its designation for a fourth year, I think, on Tier 3.

MR. MCCORMACK: Right.

QUESTION: And they put out a press release yesterday saying that contrary to State's report which says there have been no prosecutions of human traffickers, they say there were 21 prosecutions last year, three so far this year. How could the records be so different?

MR. MCCORMACK: I saw the press release and I talked to our Trafficking in Persons Office about this because I wanted to try to square this. What I was told is that, first of all, the report goes from March -- this particular report covers the time period from March 2005 to March 2006. And the office, our Trafficking in Persons Office, gathered all the information that it could. This particular set of facts or purported facts was not made available to our Trafficking in Persons Office. So I talked to John Miller about this and he said, look, if these are -- if these really are real prosecutions last year and this year, they're going to look into it. They're going to see if, in fact, this is real data. If it is, then it will be reflected in upcoming reports.

As part of this process, what we do is we encourage countries that are on Tier 3 -- and Venezuela is in Tier 3 -- we encourage them in this time period from when the report is issued until September to take remedial steps, to take action, to change the laws, change the regulations. So if the Government of Venezuela has, in fact, done these prosecutions and they're real prosecutions and they have taken steps, certainly that will be reflected in future reports.