WASHINGTON, Nov 3: Pakistan and India as well as Afghanistan remain on the list of countries that are considered as major producers of illicit drugs entering the United States or whose territory serves as a transit route for such drugs.

The list is sent by the administration annually to Congress, and the one for this year was released on Friday. But it is emphasized that the presence on the list of a country seen as a major drug-transit conduit does not constitute an “adverse reflection on its government’s counter-narcotics efforts or on the level of its cooperation with the United States.”

The list mentions the following countries: Afghanistan, the Bahamas, Bolivia, Brazil, Burma, China, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Haiti, India, Jamaica, Laos, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Thailand, Venezuela, and Vietnam.

In sending the list to Congress, President George Bush noted in a letter that among the reasons for inclusion “is the combination of geographical, commercial, and economic factors that allow drugs to transit despite the most assiduous enforcement measures of the government concerned.”

The only change to the list from the previous year is the removal of Cambodia, which is stated to have presented no signs for several years of having been a major transit country for heroin.

The president’s letter said: “In recent years, we have seen rapidly rising quantities of illegal synthetic drugs entering the United States, especially MDMA (Ecstasy) from Europe. The MDMA abuse is an emerging problem that we are studying closely. Because much of the Ecstasy consumed in Europe and the United States is manufactured clandestinely in the Netherlands, we are working closely with Dutch authorities to stop the production and export of the drug.”

The US conducted probes in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, the traditional opium poppy growing areas of the former Soviet Union. These probes did not show significant opium poppy cultivation.

While Iran was once a traditional opium-producing country, the president’s letter says, the government there appears to have been successful in eradicating significant illicit opium poppy cultivation. The latest US government survey of the country revealed no detectable poppy cultivation in the traditional growing areas.

TERROR LIST: Also on Friday, 22 of the organizations already on the State Department’s list of 28 officially designated foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs) were added to the list announced by the treasury department last month of groups or individuals targeted for financial sanctions, which had included six of the FTOs. Now all the FTOs are on the treasury list. The Harkatul Mujahideen has been on the FTO list for some time.