Azerbaijan to address UN regarding drug cultivation in occupied lands

Source: AzerNews

Azerbaijan will send an appeal to the United Nations over the cultivation of drugs in its territories occupied by Armenia, Deputy Prime Minister Ali Hasanov said on June 20.

According to Hasanov, who chairs the State Commission on the Fight against Drug Addiction and Illicit Drug Trafficking, drugs are grown in the occupied territories and those areas have turned into an international transit route for Afghan drugs.

Hasanov pointed out that terror groups directed to various conflict zones have been created in those areas, and certain money is earned from these activities.

"Recently, the Ministry of National Security detained several persons involved in drug trafficking. They admitted that those narcotics had been grown there. The President and Government of Azerbaijan have been raising this issue at international events since 1998, noting similar cases and facts in these areas. This once again indicates that the world is in some sense indifferent to such facts. This indifference could lead to serious problems for these states in the future. We will send a new appeal to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in connection with this problem in the nearest future."

Hasanov added that a need for monitoring of the area would be indicated in the appeal so that this issue would be reflected in United Nations documents once and for all.

As a result of recent operations conducted by the Azerbaijani Ministry of National Security, 12 people involved in drug smuggling from Iran were exposed. Around 40.5 kilograms of narcotic substances were seized. It was ascertained that some drugs withdrawn from the circulation had been cultivated and harvested in the occupied Azerbaijani territories. Then, these drugs were delivered to Iran and from there to Azerbaijan.

US Ambassador to Azerbaijan Richard Morningstar said earlier while commenting on the cultivation of narcotic plants in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan that the United States opposes the cultivation, sale and transit of drugs anywhere in the world.

Azerbaijani officials and representatives of international organizations have repeatedly made well-founded statements about the use of the occupied territories for drug production.

Given the urgency of the problem of controlling illicit trafficking, intensive work is underway in Azerbaijan to establish legal basis for combating such crimes.

Azerbaijan has joined the 1961, 1971 and 1988 UN conventions on narcotic drugs, psychotropic substances and the fight against illegal circulation of precursors, and concluded bilateral and multilateral agreements and memoranda with a number of countries on combating drugs.

Besides the three UN conventions, Azerbaijan is party to the Partial Agreement establishing the Pompidou Group of the Council of Europe on cooperation in combating drug abuse and trafficking in drugs.

Over 20 percent of Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions, has been occupied by Armenian armed forces since a lengthy war between the two South Caucasus countries in the early 1990s. The UN Security Council has passed four resolutions calling for an Armenian pullout, but they have not been enforced to date.