Five nation Meet to Firm up drug control stategies
By Indo Asian News Service
New Delhi, Jan 11 (IANS) In a significant regional initiative against drug trafficking, senior officials from China, India, Laos, Myanmar and Thailand met here Wednesday to explore common strategies and synergise their political commitment to combating organised crime.
Playing host to the third senior officials' meeting of the Pentalateral Group on Drug Control (PGDC), India is expected to take the lead in bringing out a blueprint for enhancing cross-border cooperation and developing strategies to fight drug trafficking and illicit crop cultivation.
'The two-day meeting will also explore common control strategies and measures for prevention and diversion of precursor and essential chemicals,' a senior official of the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) told IANS.
The five-nation meet will be followed by a bilateral one between India and China exclusively devoted to coordinating action against regional drug trafficking.
The first meeting of the PGDC was held in the northern Thai province of Chiang Rai in July 2003 after the five nations recognised that the situation in the sub-region requires immediate attention and that no single country can solve its drug problem in isolation.
At that meeting the five nations had agreed to place three main precursors - ephedrine, pseudo-ephedrine and aceticanhydride - which are essential chemicals for the production of heroin and amphetamine type stimulants in their priority control lists.
The officials are discussing various issues related to drug control cooperation, including implementation of a crop substitution programme and market admission for the programme products.
'We will also be working on measures to provide livelihood to people and wean them away from illicit crop cultivation and trafficking,' said the NCB official.
Indian home ministry officials here said the Golden Triangle, the area where Myanmar, Thailand and Laos join together, has long been one of the world's main opium-growing regions for decades and has became a centre for producing methamphetamine, a new breed of drugs.
'Rebel groups working against India, who have set up a base along the Myanmar border, are into drug trafficking and we are keen to work out an effective strategy,' said an official.
Though security measures have been tightened along the Thai-Myanmar border and the two countries are determined to eliminate drugs from their common frontier, drug lords are shifting their smuggling routes to another side of the Golden Triangle, the Thai-Lao border areas.
Officials said that drug factories, which used to be based in the Myanmar territories close to northern Thailand, were moving into bordering areas in Bor Kaew province of Laos. Officials said the amount of methamphetamine pills smuggled from Laos to Thailand rose to one million a month.
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