G8 to step up drugs fight in Afghanistan
date: 17-June-2005
source : HINDUSTAN TIMES
country: AFGHANISTAN
keyword: AFGHANISTAN , DRUG TRADE , DRUG WAR
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editorial comment
Sorry, but paraphernalia seems to remember that the taliban was the one eradicating drugs (as well as anything else.....)
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The world's eight major industrialized countries have agreed to step up funding to fight the drugs trade in Afghanistan, British Home Secretary Charles Clarke said, acknowledging that present efforts were heavily inadequate.
"Everyone agreed that more resources were necessary," Clarke said yesterday at a meeting of interior and justice ministers in the northern city of Sheffield.
Without offering any specific figures, he said countries were committed "to the principle of putting more resources in."
He said the amount would be "significant."
Although millions of dollars have been poured into the drug eradication campaign since the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan still accounts for nearly 90 percent of the world's trade in illegal heroin, according to the UN, with a production last year of 4,200 tonnes of opium.
"There are major problems where we haven't succeeded in doing what we decided to do," Clarke said. "Afghanistan and narcotics remain absolutely at the top of our agenda."
With the support of the international coalition that chased out the Taliban, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has declared a "holy war" on illegal narcotics.
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