ISLAMABAD, April 20: Officials of seven countries including Pakistan closeted here on Tuesday to chalk out a coordinated approach to the problem of drug-trafficking in the face of the rising production of opiates and artificial drugs.

Organised jointly by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the Anti Narcotic Force (ANF), the two-day meeting is a follow-up of the 38th session of the Sub Commission of the Near and Middle East convened in Amman in June 2003.

The meeting is attended by delegates, besides Pakistan, from Afghanistan, Kuwait, Iran, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The objective of the meeting, as Nadeem Hasan Niazi, Secretary Narcotics Division, stated in his inaugural address, was to work out modalities for prompt exchange of information and mutual cooperation in dealing with the problem that had assumed increasing menace in Middle and Near East in recent times.

One of the numerous dimensions of drug-trafficking was the use of genuine Pakistani workers as carriers who wanted to go to seek work in the Gulf countries. They were thus callously defaming the migrant workers whose sole concern was to earn bread for their families.

Another worrying trend, he said, was the increased trafficking of drugs into countries around the Gulf, using high speed boats and dhows. At first, this cargo might have been for transshipment to another continent but of late the countries along the trafficking route too were beset by the problem of drug abuse.

Although poppy cultivation was brought down from 80,500 acres in 1978-79 to 2,000 acres in 1999-2000, it had resurged, without new areas being introduced to it. Last year, as the ANF director-general said, it was cultivated in 16,000 acres of tribal area contiguous to NWFP and Balochistan, out of which 6,000 acres could not be destroyed because of the operation against the "terrorists".

During the current year, it had sown over 18,000 acres, out of which nearly 14,000 might be successfully destroyed, he said. The rest would again be inaccessible to ANF owing to action against the "terrorists".

Mr Niazi characterized Afghanistan as the world's largest drugs producer. In 1999, it produced 4,565 tones of narcotic drugs. After significant reduction in 2000, its production had jumped to the 1999 level again. Most of these drugs enter Pakistan through the porous border.

A number of MoUs for cooperation in curbing drug-trafficking have been signed by this country with UAE, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Russian Federation, China, Nigeria, Egypt, Iran, Turkey and Romania. Similar MoUs with Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and Italy were in the pipeline.

Under a project funded by the UNODC, Pakistan and Iran have set up two forums envisaging periodical meetings of senior law enforcement officers and governmental technical committees.

Yusaf Mahmood, officer-in-charge UNODC, said while all the communities around the world faced the common threat from drug trafficking and the increasing levels of crime associated with it, the states of this region faced a greater threat than many others.

"Wars, poverty and insurgency have seen Afghanistan become the world's largest producer of narcotics. While dismantling its opium economy with the instruments of democracy, rule of law and development would be a long and complex process."

"For the foreseeable future, are doubly challenged to prevent the export of illicit opium production from reaching our communities and to suppress its production through the denial of access to the precursor chemicals essential for its manufacture."

In addition to the opiate threat, Mr Yusaf observed, was cannabis resin of which this region is a primary producer. Global reports reflect increases in the number of seizures made together with larger volumes seized.

The UNODC official also drew the participants' attention to the growing production and abuse of artificial products (ATS, amphetamine-type stimulants). These man-made products would certainly replace those of nature at an increasing pace because of the economics of supply and the fashion of demand, he added.