Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Rome (Agenzia Fides)- Africa and Europe unite to fight drug trafficking. This emerged from a Seminar in Rome for heads of anti-drug services of northern and western Africa countries and G6 countries, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Spain and Poland. The seminar ended on 23 November.
The Seminar participants agreed on the necessity to build strong alliances with African countries to defeat international criminal organisations which are inundating the European market mainly with cocaine and are also preparing to open operative and logistic bases with heroine traffickers coming from Afghanistan and local cannabis traffickers.
They also said that the flow of cocaine which reaches Europe from Latin America (and which passes ever more frequently by way of west Africa), will increase due to the weak dollar: drug traffickers prefer Euro to US dollars. This is why European police forces expect a still greater flow of cocaine and heroine from Afghanistan, where this year's opium poppy harvest was 34% higher than the previous one. Opium is the raw material from which heroine is made. Some of the 'Afghan' drug reaches Europe through Africa and this has created a local market.
To combat the phenomenon the participants decided to intensify information sharing among European anti-drug officials deployed in Africa and to open an anti-drug co-ordination Centre to detect trafficking via the Mediterranean and to activate immediate interventions on the part of navy or special police units. (L.M.) (Agenzia Fides 26/11/2007 righe 21 parole 275)
