Russia urges world to step up support of Afghanistan

Russia calls on the world community to step up all-round support of Afghanistan with the leading coordinating role of the UN, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov told the Regional ASEAN /Association of South East Nations/ Forum in Cambodia.

"The Taleban are becoming active again, stepping up subversive and terrorist activities," announced Ivanov. "Revival of a peaceful, independent, neutral, prosperous Afghan state - that's the main guarantee that terrorist and other transborder threats to regional and global security stop emanating from its territory." The Russian side has been seriously worried about the growing figures of drug production and sale in Afghanistan. According to Ivanov, revenues from drugs are one of the main sources feeding international terrorism and the internal as well as the international conflict. "The strategy of counteracting the Afghan drug threat must be based on measures to obliterate opium poppy in the country and strengthen the external anti-drug 'security belts' encircling Afghanistan," he pointed out.

He reminded the assembly that Russian was a co-initiator of a complex international anti-drug strategy.

Further on, he said it was necessary to expand regional anti-drug cooperation and work out and realize measures to reduce the drug hazard threshold in the Asia Pacific Region in close cooperation with the UN.