Iran on Tuesday blasted the international community for its "indifference" to the Islamic republic's ongoing battle against growing drugs trafficking in the region.
"We want to make it clear that the international community has done nothing but talk and praise us, without giving us any practical support," Interior Minister Abdol-Vahed Mussavi-Lari told reporters.
He denounced the "indifference" of world bodies such as the United Nations and condemned the Taliban militia for turning neighboring Afghanistan into "the biggest drugs manufacturer on the planet."
Tehran has regularly accused the Sunni Muslim Taliban, who control almost all of Afghanistan since seizing power in Kabul in 1996, of being the root of the region's enormous drugs trade.
Mussavi-Lari claimed that 4,600 tons of narcotics were produced in its eastern neighbour last year and "sold throughout the world with the help of the Afghans and the international mafia."
Iran, which has been battling a sharp price in crime attributed to illegal narcotics, fights a serious and non-stop war against drugs coming across its borders.
More than 700 traffickers and nearly 175 police officers were killed in 1999 in armed clashes near Iran's borders, according to government figures.
But some 740 smugglers, most of them Afghan nationals, have now been killed in the last nine months alone, with another 210 wounded and some 360 arrested in all.
In addition to the steep rise in crime, Iran has been faced with a spate of kidnappings of villagers in border regions and is planning to fence off the entirety of its frontier with Afghanistan.
"Whatever happens, we are going to wall-up the border," Mussavi-Lari said -- TEHRAN (AFP)
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
