990401

UN to set up high-tech

drug monitoring network

RECORDER REPORT

KARACHI: Member countries of the United Nations main policy making body for drug control have agreed to set up a high-technology monitoring network.

The network included ground surveys and remote satellite sensing, eradication the coca bush, cannabis plant and opium poppy by year 2008.

According to UN Information Centre, the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, at its just-concluded 42nd annual session in Vienna, adopted a resolution, sponsored by Colombia, requesting the United Nations International Drug Control Programme (UNDCP) to help governments with national tools to monitor illicit drug growing, so that drug control targets laid down at last June's General Assembly's special session to eradicate illicit crops can be met.

The resolution was co-sponsored by China, Bolivia, Iran, Papua New Guinea, Nigeria, Ghana, Ecuador, France, Thailand, Madagascar, South Africa, Morocco, Chile, Turkey, Russian Federation and the Sudan.

National monitoring would form the backbone of an international network to stamp out illicit drug crops. The UNDCP would establish a central data bank with informations supplied by governments on illicit cultivation and report annually to the commission.

"This is a big step ahead in the strategy to eliminate illicit crops worldwide," said Pino Arlacchi, Executive Director of the UNDCP. "The international community now has an instrument that will accurately measure all progress and next step will be to begin implementing the monitoring programme by providing adequate resources," he said.

The commission agreement is the follow-up to a plan drawn up at the General Assembly's special session in June 1998.

Although estimates have been regularly made, the international community currently has no reliable system to collect and analyse data on illicit drug crops, particularly for the cannabis plant. With no international monitoring system in place, it can neither assess progress to eliminate drug crop nor successfully prevent the "balloon effect" or transfer of illicit cultivation to other regions.