Iranian minister says "drug tsunami" to hit region next year
Iran's Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi says that next year,
the region will experience even more problems with drugs, and it
will eventually be hit with a "drug tsunami", IRNA news agency
reported.
Salehi made the remarks Thursday in Kazakhstan at a meeting of
senior officials in the framework of the Ministerial Conference of
the Istanbul Process on Afghanistan.
The key objective of the meeting is to agree on the text of the
Almaty Declaration and other documents of the main
ministerial-level meeting scheduled for Friday, according to
Kazakhstan's Foreign Ministry.
Speaking on Afghanistan, Salehi said that the next year the land in
Afghanistan that is used for growing drugs will increase by three
times.
Iran's FM said further that the region suffers from low level of
education, lack of financial resources, and weak economic
structures.
"These are the common problems for regional countries, that
negatively affect all of them," Salehi said.
He noted that for solving these problems, foreign forces must exit
the region, as regional countries should deal with their problems
on their own.
"The result of foreign intervention in the region has led to
increase of drug trafficking in the first place," Salehi noted.
Salehi expressed hope that Afghanistan and other Asian countries
would pay more attention to regional cooperation, and increase it,
so that the overall security in the region would improve.
Iran has intensified its fight against drug trafficking as the
Islamic Republic's geographical position has made it a favorite
transit corridor for drug traffickers who intend to smuggle their
cargoes from Afghanistan to drug dealers in Europe.
Each year, the government of Iran spends hundreds of millions of
dollars erecting barriers along the borders with Pakistan and
Afghanistan. Officials said the battle against drug addiction and
trafficking costs Iran $1 billion a year.