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Publish date: Saturday 08 June 2019
view count : 80
create date : Saturday, June 8, 2019 | 1:59 PM
publish date : Saturday, June 8, 2019 | 1:59 PM
update date : Saturday, June 8, 2019 | 1:59 PM

Iran urges Europe to pay its share of combating drug trafficking

  • Iran urges Europe to pay its share of combating drug trafficking
Massoud Zahedian

Iran said on Saturday that if Europe does not pay its share of fighting against illegal drug trafficking, it should deal with a situation in which illicit drugs will be available to every European individual.

And this situation will harm the European society, Head of Iran's Anti-Narcotics Police Brigadier General Massoud Zahedian told IRNA.

If Europe does not support the forces and countries which are taking measures against illicit drug trafficking and are also pioneer in this issue, the European society will face a difficult situation, Brigadier-General Zahedian said.

Europeans are the biggest consumer market of Afghan drugs, and Afghanistan is still the world's biggest opium producer which shares a long border with its western strategic country of Iran.

Iran, as one of Afghanistan's neighbors, is on the route of illegal drug transit to Europe and the country has not been secured against such illegal activities.

Iran is the main trafficking route from Afghanistan and Pakistan to the European and Asian countries.

Although the fight against drug trafficking activities has cost Iran a lot, the country has been strongly taking anti-narcotics measures over the past 30 years.

On the counter-narcotics measures' expenses, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani raised the issue on May 8 including Iran's role in the campaign against terrorism, providing regional security and preventing the flow of refugees to Europe and confronting illegal drug-traffickers, saying that such tasks need to spend billions of dollars.

If the nuclear deal is good for the regional peace; therefore, everybody should pay for it, the president said in his speech on the occasion of the first anniversary of the US withdrawal from the Iran Deal.

Anti-drug campaign has claimed lives of about 4,000 Iranian policemen in armed clashes on border areas with Afghanistan.

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