News

NATO
and Russia clashed on Wednesday over how to tackle the drug problem in
Afghanistan, where Western nations have been fighting a Taliban-led
insurgency for eight years, dpa reported.

The country is the world's largest producer of poppy seeds, a key
ingredient in the manufacture of heroin. Russia is keen to pursue an
aggressive eradication strategy, while Western allies fear that such an
approach risks antagonizing the local population, who rely on selling
poppy crops to survive.

The different points of view came to a head at a meeting of the
NATO-Russia Council attended by the head of Russia's Federal Drug
Control Agency (FSKN), Victor Ivanov and NATO Secretary General Anders
Fogh Rasmussen.

"Afghan opiates led to the death of 1 million people by overdose in the
last 10 years, and that is United Nations data. Is that not a threat to
world peace and security?" Ivanov asked journalists after the meeting.

In his speech to NATO diplomats, a copy of which was handed to the
press, Ivanov stressed that "NATO is fully responsible for normalizing
the situation in Afghanistan, including the elimination of drug
production."

The Russian official presented a 7-point plan that foresees, among other
things, an extension of the... >>>