Kazakh diplomat: Illicit drug trafficking continued to be global challenge

Azerbaijan, Baku, Oct. 6 / Trend , G.Dadashova /

The problem of illicit drug trafficking continued to be a global challenge, Kazakh permanent Representative to the UN Byrganym Aitimova, speaking on behalf of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), said at the meeting of the Third Committee of the 66th UN General Assembly on Oct.5.

Aitimova said this problem could not be solved separately from the problems of organized crime, international terrorism, extremism, corruption and illegal migration.

Welcoming the World Drug Report 2010 of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), she nonetheless said that it was too early to discuss the reduction of heroin production from the cultivated crop area in Afghanistan, as noted in the UNODC World Drug Reports of the past three years.

That production, 90 percent of the world's total, remained the main threat to the region and affected all parts of the globe.

Aitimova said heroin use was rising in CSTO countries, despite the fact that they were not final trafficking destinations, she said.

The "northern route," passing through the countries of Central Asia and Russia, was a principal trafficking route to Europe, but left half of the 120 tons of heroin, so transported, in those countries. Consumption in CIS countries resulted in 50,000 deaths annually. Regional cooperation was essential to eradicate that traffic, she noted.

Regional entities engaged in fighting the growing threat included Operation Channel, undertaken by CSTO in 2003, and the Central Asian Regional Information and Coordination Centre, the coordinating mechanism in fighting transborder drug trafficking, opened in Kazakhstan in 2009, she said.

CSTO was making serious efforts to build and strengthen anti-drug "security belts" around Afghanistan