Ivanov Once Again Demands: Eradicate The Afghan Poppy Fields

April 11, 2010 (LPAC)—In an interview with Germany's Die Welt daily, yesterday, Russian anti-drug czar Viktor Ivanov once again sounded the alarm over the dope threat, saying: "Across our basically open border with Kazakhstan, the dope gets into Siberia. Over the latest period, we have monitored a redirection of the dope stream into the Northern Caucasus republics. Thus, the volume of heroin delivered to Dagestan increased 20-fold, last year." Ivanov pointed to a "connection, naturally, to terrorist activities in the North Caucasus."

Ivanov said that the opium production in Afghanistan has increased by such an extent that "at present, only one-third of the production can be sold abroad, whereas two-thirds are stored in mountainous regions that are hard to reach. According to UN estimates, this is more than 12,000 tons of opium—two complete annual productions."

As for the American view of the matter, Ivanov said that "the argument of the Americans that one must not deprive the Afghan farmers of their only source of income, is not convincing. Because the price of opium has dropped considerably, the farmers become just as poor this way, or should they now grow even more poppy to keep their poor standard of living? At the same time, NATO's argument is that the destruction of the poppy fields and of the dope laboratories was the job of the Afghan government. But NATO is the one that is responsible for security in Afghanistan!"

Ivanov said that when he was in Berlin recently, he found that "officers of Germany's counter-intelligence agency BND supported my demand to burn the poppy fields down. But at the political level, they say: no, we will not do that. And that is why nobody is doing anything against the 150 to 200 dope laboratories that exist in northern Afghanistan, where the German troops are stationed." Ivanov proposed a joint anti-dope task force between Russia and Germany/Europe, because "60% of the Afghan heroin is consumed in Russia and in the EU. We should join efforts to do something against that, therefore."

Another senior Russian diplomat, Anvar Azimov, the ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), addressed the Afghan drug problem as a "global security threat," in a statement in Vienna, yesterday.

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