G8 wants Iran's help in fight against Afghan opium

Berlin, May 26: The G8 industrial nations are concerned about the rise of opium production in Afghanistan and want to enlist Iran and other neighbouring countries to crush trafficking of the drug, Germany has said.

Opium production in Afghanistan rose by as much as 50 percent last year to supply more than 90 per cent of global heroin, according to a United Nations estimate.

''We have made a big effort (to combat drug production in Afghanistan) but the results are not very satisfying, since drug production has increased and trafficking has increased,'' German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said yesterday after a meeting of G8 interior and justice ministers.

Germany is currently president of the Group of Eight, which also includes the United States, Britain, France, Italy, Canada, Japan and Russia. It will host the G8 summit in the Baltic resort town of Heiligendamm June 6-8.

In a statement, the G8 called for a ''strengthening of cooperation with Afghanistan's neighbouring countries'' to stop the flow of narcotics out of Afghanistan and prevent smuggling of substances needed to make drugs into the country.

''We also agreed that we have to further involve neighbouring countries, including Iran, in this cooperation, despite all the problems we may have with Iran,'' Schaeuble said. ''Iran also suffers a great deal because of this drug trafficking.'' Iran, which the West accuses of secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons, shares a 900-km (560-mile) border with Afghanistan, the world's number one producer of the opium poppy which is the key ingredient for heroin.

Tehran denies wanting the bomb but has been punished with UN sanctions for refusing to halt its nuclear fuel programme.

The scale of heroin and other drug abuse in Iran, which straddles a major smuggling route, is a growing problem - and one which the conservative Islamic state shares with the United States and its other Western foes.

Combatting Terrorism

In its statement, the G8 welcomed progress in reducing opium cultivation in the north and centre of Afghanistan, but expressed concern about the increase in the unstable south.

It said this is ''where more than 60 per cent of Afghanistan's opium was grown last year, and drug traffickers, insurgents and terrorists are making common cause against the government and international forces.'' Schaeuble said the group also agreed on some specific steps to be taken in the fight against global terrorism. Those steps included enhanced sharing of information about the Internet and increased protection of key buildings and installations, such as utilities, chemical plants and information technology sites.

''We have to do more to combat terrorists' use of the Internet,'' he said.

He added they would try to make terrorists' use of the Internet for planning and propagating terrorism a criminal act, which he said was proving difficult to legislate in some countries, including the United States.

Reuters>