BRUSSELS, June 28 (Itar-Tass) — Struggle with drugs trafficking from Afghanistan is the main subject of an international conference in the European Parliament that will be attended by the director of Russia’s Federal Service for Control over the Circulation of Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances /FSKN/, Viktor Ivanov.
The conference is titled ‘The Implementation of a New Strategy for Afghanistan’ has been organized by the Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats.
Apart from struggling with the flows of drugs coming out of Afghanistan, the participants in the conference will also consider international participation in the efforts to rehabilitate the Afghan economy and to reorient the Afghan farming sector from the drug crops over to normal agricultural products.
Organizationally, the gathering will split into three sections – ‘The peace process and the role of key regional and international actors’, ‘A five-year plan for eliminating opium production in Afghanistan’, and ‘New Prospects for the EU work in Afghanistan’.
The organizers have invited a number of senior officials from Kabul to attend. Their list includes Scham L. Bathija, the Senior Adviser and Minister for Economic Affairs to the President of Afghanistan, Suraja Dalil, the Minister of Public Health and Jarullah Mansoori, the Minister of Rural Rehabilitation and Development.
Viktor Ivanov is expected to take part in a discussion of the five-year plan for elimination of opium-containing cultures in Afghanistan. Other senior speakers are Pino Arlacchi, the European Parliament’s rapporteur on Afghanistan, and Jonathan Lucas, the director of the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute.
Ivanov addressed a presentation of the world report on narcotic drugs at the UN headquarters last week. He said in his speech there that Afghan drugs have carried away the lives of about a million people in the countries adjoining Afghanistan.
Ivanov urged the UN to put the problem of Afghan drugs on the list of issues to be discussed by the General Assembly session.
Plantations of opium poppy occupy almost 123,000 hectares of land in Afghanistan. The world total area under these’ crops’ is 195,700 hectares.
Non sono una persona complicata. La mia vita pubblica ruota intorno a due cose: il tentativo di capire ciò che mi circonda, da sociologo, e il tentativo di costruire un mondo più decente, da intellettuale e militante politico.
