Cambodia, VN to step up fight against drugs

via CAAI News Media

Friday, 09 April 2010 15:03 Cheang Sokha

CAMBODIA and Vietnam have agreed to increase efforts against drug trafficking along the border between the two countries, officials said Thursday, adding that Vietnam could also advise local officials on the rehabilitation of drug addicts.

Lieutenant General Moek Dara, secretary general of the National Committee for Combating Drugs and chief of the Interior Ministry’s Anti-Drug Trafficking Department, said officials from the two countries attended a conference on cross-border drug trafficking in Ho Chi Minh City on Wednesday to exchange information and techniques to combat smuggling.

“We have a good cooperation with Vietnam,” Moek Dara told the Post Thursday.

“We also have cooperation in the same field with neighbouring countries Laos and Thailand.”

At the meeting, the two parties pledged to increase information exchanges and establish more checkpoints along the border, he added.

Moek Dara said Cambodia and Vietnam have signed a number of memorandums of understanding (MoU) related to drug smuggling since 1998, and that the efforts of officials from both countries had significantly reduced drug production, trading and use.

According to Vietnam News, Lieutenant Colonel Hoang Anh Tuyen, deputy director of the standing office on drug control, said Vietnam was ready to offer training to Cambodian officials in investigation techniques and the setting up of rehab centres for drug addicts, as agreed in a MoU signed by the two countries in November.

Major General Phorn Boramy, head of the executive department of Cambodia’s National Authority for Combating Drugs, was quoted as saying that the raw materials for drugs were often purchased within the so-called Golden Triangle, which encompasses parts of Laos, Myanmar and Thailand.