News / Politics

Annual Session on drugs underway in Vienna

Monday, 09 March 2015 11:00 AM [ Last Update: Monday, 09 March 2015 11:15 AM ]

Iranian Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli

The 58th annual session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs is underway at the Vienna-based UN building.

According to Press TV Correspondent Homa Lezgee, the event comes in preparation for the special session of the UN General Assembly on the global scourge of narcotics.

Iranian Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli who doubles as the secretary general of the country's Drug Control Headquarters is attending the session and will deliver a speech shortly.

The top Iranian official is expected to attend a working lunch with the representatives of Afghanistan and Pakistan later on Monday. The group is known as the Trilateral Initiative.

The interior minister will then sit down with Yury Fedotov, the Executive Director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, who is also attending the event.

Having a common border of over 800 kilometers with Afghanistan, which is the largest producer of narcotics in the world, the Islamic Republic is the main transit route for the smuggling of narcotics from Afghanistan to Europe. Iran has spent billions of dollars to seal its borders and prevent the transit of narcotics destined for European, Arab and Central Asian countries. The war on drug trade, a lucrative business originating in Afghanistan, has also claimed the lives of nearly 4,000 Iranian police officers and soldiers

NN/HRB

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