Pubdate: Thu, 01 Mar 2001
Source: Reuters
Copyright: 2001 Reuters Limited
Author: Kristen Schweizer

EAST EUROPE DRUG FLOW WORRIES BRITAIN

BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Britain's anti-drugs tsar warned on Thursday that 
central European countries in line for European Union membership are major 
transit routes to western Europe for heroin and other illegal drugs.

``We are very concerned with the countries which will be the side door of 
Europe in the near future,'' Keith Hellawell, who heads anti-drug efforts 
in Britain and reports to Prime Minister Tony Blair, said.

``In the past year we've had more heroin coming up through the Balkan route 
than we can stop,'' Hellawell told a news conference in Budapest, the 
Hungarian capital.

He said Britain had received better cooperation from South American 
countries in curbing cocaine smuggling than from Balkan countries in 
controlling the flow of narcotics. Hellawell, who was speaking after two 
days talks with Hungarian officials on reducing the drugs flow to western 
Europe, was due to head shortly to Serbia and Albania.

He said several EU membership candidate countries in central and east 
Europe, particularly Hungary and Poland, were well-known routes for drug 
runners.

Vast amounts of heroin from Afghanistan (news - web sites) are trucked 
through Pakistan, Turkey and Bulgaria to the Balkan countries. A large 
portion makes its way through Hungary, and drugs are also shipped via 
Ukraine and former Soviet republics through Poland, Hellawell said.

``We have to improve and develop capacities within each of these countries 
for better coordination,'' he said.

He warned that cocaine trafficking was on the rise in central Europe, 
though it was not yet at the level of heroin. ``We could have bad cocaine 
issues in this region in the next 10 years,'' Hellawell said.

EU candidate countries must meet strict drug-related terms before entry, 
showing that they have the specific controls and infrastructure to curb 
their inflows of heroin and cocaine by 2008, he noted.
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