Azernews.Az

By Sara Rajabova

The territory of the Armenian-occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan is used for the transit of drugs and cultivation of narcotic substances, a senior Azerbaijani official has said.

As a result of the occupation of 20 percent of Azerbaijani territory, the 132 kilometer-long state border area was left without control, Deputy Prime Minister and Chairman of the State Committee on Combating Illicit Trafficking in Narcotic Drugs, Ali Hasanov, said at a meeting of the committee on Friday.

This constitutes a major impediment for making progress in the fight against drug trafficking not only in Azerbaijan but also in the entire region, since this border area, the so-called "criminal black hole", is used as an attractive trafficking channel.

Because of the lack of proper control, the occupied territories of Azerbaijan are used as transit territory for trafficking in narcotic drugs from Afghanistan to the CIS countries and Europe.

According to Hasanov, there are three routes of illicit drug transit across the country: Afghanistan-Pakistan-Iran-Azerbaijan, Afghanistan-Iran-Azerbaijan and Afghanistan-Central Asia-Azerbaijan.

"There is another illicit drug transit route which is not included in the map of international illicit drug transit routes. That is the Afghanistan-Iran-Nagorno-Karabakh route. Azerbaijan has already sent an appeal to international organizations to include this route in the map," Hasanov said.

Given the urgency of the problem of controlling illicit trafficking, intensive work is underway in Azerbaijan in order to establish a legal basis for combating these types of offences.

Over 20 percent of Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions, has been occupied by Armenian armed forces since a lengthy war in the early 1990s. The UN Security Council has adopted four resolutions on Armenia's withdrawal from the Azerbaijani territory, but they have not been enforced to this day.

Azerbaijan has joined the 1961, 1971 and 1988 UN conventions on narcotic drugs, psychotropic substances and the fight against illegal circulation of precursors and concluded bilateral and multilateral agreements and memoranda with a number of countries on combating drugs.

Besides the three UN conventions, Azerbaijan is party to the Partial Agreement establishing the Pompidou Group of the Council of Europe on cooperation in combating drug abuse and trafficking in drugs.

Relevant cooperation agreements to combat trafficking in narcotics have been signed with the agencies of the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Egypt, Gulf states, CIS and other countries.

The tasks of state bodies in the area of combating drug addiction and drug trafficking are defined by the presidential decree of August 26, 1996 on Measures to Combat Drug Addiction and Illicit Drug Trafficking and the Law of June 18, 1999 on Control of Illicit Trafficking in Narcotic Drugs, Psychotropic Substances and Precursors.