Compiling an Afghan land registry could help global efforts to combat drug trafficking from the country, Russia's drug control chief said on Wednesday.
Viktor Ivanov told an international anti-drug forum in Moscow that it is necessary "to compile a list of Afghan landowners and to include southern provinces in the general registry."
Afghan drug production increased dramatically after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled the Taliban in 2001. Russia, which has suffered a steep rise in heroin consumption, has been one of the countries most affected by the increase.
Other measures put forward in a Moscow-backed action plan include the elimination of poppy plantations and the inclusion of large landowners who provide land for the plantations on the UN sanction list.
"Afghanistan supports Russia's proposals with great enthusiasm, particularly on compiling land registries," he said.
Ivanov said earlier that the United States has effectively used defoliants to eradicate coca and poppy plantations in Columbia, wiping out nearly 230,000 hectares in 2008 alone. During the same period, only 3% of Afghan poppy plantations were eradicated.
Semyon Bagdasarov, a member of the Russian parliament's international affairs committee said, however, that the United States would never agree to the destruction of opium plantations in Afghanistan.
"If the United States begins to actively destroy [the opium plantations], the number of insurgents would soar," the lawmaker said at the forum.
He also said other potential measures such as boosting industrial growth and promoting the growth of other agricultural crops were useless.
"It is necessary to destroy the drug laboratories in the north of Afghanistan and cut transit routes. That is why Russia, the United States and NATO need to synchronize their efforts," Bagdasarov added.
Nearly 200 experts, politicians and drug-control specialists from 40 countries are attending the anti-drugs forum in Moscow on Wednesday and Thursday to discuss ways of stopping drug traffic from Afghanistan.
According to the Federal Drug Control Service, Afghan opium kills around 100,000 people around the world including 30,000 Russians each year.
MOSCOW, June 9 (RIA Novosti)
