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Pubdate: Sun, 27 May 2001 Source: Times of India, The (India) Copyright: Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. 2001 Contact: http://www.timesofindia.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/453 Author: Chidanand Rajghatta UN REPORT SLAMS TALIBAN FOR DRUGS, PAKISTAN FOR TERRORISM WASHINGTON: The United Nations on Friday accused the ruling Taliban in Afghanistan of selling drugs to finance its wars and slammed Pakistan for failing to regulate its madrassas (religious school) which it said are a main source for recruiting terrorists. In a report to the UN Security Council, a five-member expert group recommended setting up a new UN sanctions monitoring office based in Vienna which would employ specialists in illegal arms trafficking, drugs, money laundering and counter-terrorism. The specialists, who would collect and analyse information about the terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, would be mandated to publish their findings widely even as they worked with various border control and counter-terrorism services in the six States neighbouring Afghanistan. Based on two months of fact-finding and information gathering work, the expert panel proposes among other measures a ban on the supply of aircraft turbine fuel, which the Taliban uses for its helicopters and fighter bombers, and monitoring the movement of acetic anhydride, a chemical used to produce heroin. Several recommendations are directed at Afghanistan's neighbours, particularly Pakistan, where religious schools called madrassas provide a supply of recruits to the Taliban. "The Pakistan authorities should be urged to exercise greater control over the madrassas on their territory and the movement of people across their common border with Afghanistan," the report states. The expert group's observation on the Taliban's drug record runs counter to the US view. The five-member panel has questioned the sincerity of the Taliban supreme leader Mullah Omar in banning cultivation of poppy last July. It says the Taliban was stockpiling drugs and it has halted production only to keep opium and heroin prices from plummeting. If Taliban officials were sincere in stopping production of opium and heroin, then one would expect them to order the destruction of all stocks existing in areas under their control, the report says. The US, on the other hand, believes the Taliban is really cracking down on poppy cultivation, and based on the observations of its own study team, it recently sanctioned a $43 million aid to Afghanistan. In discussing the terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, the expert group report says the difficulty in closing the camps is that many of them are simple, rudimentary affairs that can easily be strict and the occupied rapidly dispersed to other locations. However, it says Pakistan could use any number of measures and techniques to control cross-border movement with help from the international community. The proposed UN office in Vienna should employ sanctions enforcement teams to work with various border control and counter-terrorism services in the six states neighbouring Afghanistan, according to the report. The teams would help those countries to modernise all aspects of their border legislation, customs procedures and border control techniques. The experts say their recommendations should be implemented "at least until such time as realistic and productive negotiations are held, leading to a lasting political settlement, within which must be incorporated a verifiable mechanism for the closure of all terrorist training facilities and a plan to repatriate non-Afghan terrorists." - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake