YouSaid · the spoken record

Costa

lines on the record

111

first

2003-06-17

most recent

2010-03-19

sittings or episodes

9

sources

un-security-council

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1. “Secondly, the report has reconstructed the country's development processes piece by piece to show that it is essential to help farmers decide in favour of licit crops; to replace local narco-usurers with microcredit programmes; to provide jobs and education to women and children, who are most heavily involved in the cultivation of a labour-intensive product like opium poppies; to turn bazaars into modern trading places; and to neutralize warlords and their efforts to keep the drug trade alive. As I said earlier, however, national efforts are not enough. Hence the convergent efforts of neighbouring countries through which narcotics are exported and of Europe and Russia, where heroin abuse helps nourish opium cultivation in Afghanistan, are needed. In particular, the international community needs to develop a comprehensive approach.”

   2003-06-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4774 (2003) · source

2. “It foresees the elimination of opium within 10 years through law enforcement and rural development. It also aims to counter domestic processing and trafficking, fight money-laundering, reduce abuse and enhance international cooperation in drug control. Indeed, we believe that the Afghan drug economy can be reconverted to peace and growth if the Government is assisted in addressing the roots of the matter. A report recently prepared by my Office - copies of which are available to the members of the Council - has exposed the roots of the problem. First, the report has deconstructed Afghanistan's drug economy into its main components: production, trafficking, financing, refining and abuse.”

   2003-06-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4774 (2003) · source

3. “In some of the countries neighbouring Afghanistan, four out of five - over 80 per cent of - new cases of HIV infection have been caused this way. Unless the problem is brought under control, the risk of a pandemic in the region cannot be excluded - a point that President Putin himself raised in his recent address to his nation. Finally, the massive drug traffic from Afghanistan endangers economic and social stability in the countries located along the trafficking routes, thereby fuelling crime, money-laundering and terrorist activities beyond the Afghan border. Therefore, in closing, I would like to stress the importance of a partnership in addressing the Afghan drug question. The Transitional Islamic Government of Afghanistan last month adopted a first national drug control strategy.”

   2003-06-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4774 (2003) · source

4. “The drug dealers, among them the remnants of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, have a vested interest in ensuring that the Afghan State remains weak in Afghanistan. In pursuing their goals, they foment regional strife and nourish separatist ambitions and armed conflicts to destabilize the Government. Secondly, corruption is both a cause and a consequence of narcotrafficking in Afghanistan, much as it is everywhere else. My Office has studied extensively the drug-trafficking routes. A common element among them is the presence of corrupt Government officials, corrupt port and airport staff and corrupt customs employees. The old Silk Road has now been turned into an opium-paved road and is riddled with such evidence of corruption. Perhaps the most serious threat, however, has come from the spreading of HIV/AIDS because of drug injection.”

   2003-06-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4774 (2003) · source

5. “In order to understand how important it is to redress the risk/reward balance in the Afghan countryside, let me make another point regarding the security and political factors I have already addressed. The task of ridding Afghanistan of the drug economy requires much greater political, security and financial capital than is presently available to assist the rural areas affected by opium production and, above all, to improve the central Government's ability to implement its opium production ban. Drugs originating in Afghanistan provide resources to crime and terrorism. They are a threat to stability. They pose a major health threat. They corrupt. Let me address these points one at the time.”

   2003-06-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4774 (2003) · source

6. “First, with respect to the economic factors, on the surface of it the country seems to defy a basic law of economics, according to which price and risk trends are correlated. In the modern market, as in every economic aspect, prices increase if risks increase. This is not the case in Afghanistan today. Opium prices, which were at about $35 to $50 per kilo a few years ago, have recently shot up to about $550 to $600 per kilo. While the revenue generated to farmers by the opium harvest in the 1990s was $150 million a year, last year it was $1.2 billion - almost 10 times greater. An amount of this order of magnitude is equal to the resources made available by the international community to Afghanistan last year. Illegally, the same amount of income is being generated domestically.”

   2003-06-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4774 (2003) · source

7. “Because, over the past 20 years, Afghan agriculture - actually the entire infrastructure in the countryside - has been destroyed, resulting in a war economy in which arms, drugs, smuggling and opium have provided the means of livelihood, savings, credit and the means of exchange for almost one fifth of the economy. About 20 per cent of the gross domestic product of Afghanistan is involved in this illegal activity. To rid Afghanistan of its dependence on illegal activities, it is necessary to create ample and easily accessible opportunities for alternative, licit sources of income. This task, however, is rendered complicated by the interrelated economic and political factors, including security factors, that I addressed just now. Let me look at them from my own angle.”

   2003-06-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4774 (2003) · source

8. “According to our preliminary survey - we shall release the final survey in September - current opium cultivation appears to have spread to new areas, while a perceptible decrease has taken place in the traditional provinces of Helmand, Kandahar, Nangahar and Oruzgan. On balance, neither the total surface under cultivation nor the volume of output is likely to change significantly in 2003 with respect to last year. What is the significance of all this? We need to recognize that, despite current efforts, in the coming years Afghanistan will continue to be the world's largest opium producer. Why such a long time frame?”

   2003-06-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4774 (2003) · source

9. “While the opium economy undermines current institution-building efforts in Afghanistan, the argument could actually be turned around: the slow progress in re-establishing the rule of law is hurting the ability of the authorities to reduce the drug economy. It is a vicious circle that we need to break, and I will return to this issue. What are the facts of the current situation? In 2002, the Office of Drugs and Crime in Vienna - my Office - estimated poppy cultivation in Afghanistan at 74,000 hectares, resulting in 3,400 tons of output from five provinces in the northern, eastern and southern parts of the country. All tribes and ethnic groups were involved. What about this year, 2003?”

   2003-06-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4774 (2003) · source

10. “Thirdly, it is not true that the whole country is involved in illegal activity. Less than 1 per cent of its land is devoted to opium poppy cultivation, and no more than 6 per cent of its families derive the resulting illicit income from that activity. Only five of the country's 31 provinces produce opium on a large scale. The Afghan Transitional Administration is gradually rebuilding the country's Government, and national policies are being developed, difficult and long as the process is. In the process, generous support from the international community - particularly from the nations that have taken the lead in various sectors of the Administration - remains indispensable. Allow me to thank in particular the Government of the United Kingdom for its generous and continuing role in leading the anti-narcotics work.”

    2003-06-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4774 (2003) · source

11. “Mr. Costa: It is an honour to address the Council, and I thank you, Mr. President, for the invitation to do so. At the outset, I should like to stress three points regarding the drug situation in Afghanistan. First, during the past quarter century, Afghanistan has found itself at the crossroads of Violence and, as a consequence, of illegal activity. War and lawlessness have been the forces that have driven opium production to its present levels, not the other way around; let us be sure we get the logic right. Secondly, the establishment of the effective rule of law is essential. The Government's commitment to controlling the cultivation, trade and abuse of narcotics can be honoured only if stability and security spread throughout the country - a point just raised, in a sense, by my colleague Mr. Guehenno.”

    2003-06-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4774 (2003) · source