China has agreed with other Greater Mekong sub-regional countries to expand drug-control cooperation to eradicate poppy cultivation in the notorious Golden Triangle and halt the spread of new drugs.

"Joint efforts have achieved great success, and we call upon countries in and out of the region to take stronger drug-control measures with the ultimate aim of eliminating illicit opium poppy cultivation in the region," said the 2007 Beijing Declaration of the Seventh Ministerial Meeting of Signatory Countries of the 1993 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on Drug Control on Friday in Beijing.

More than 80 representatives from China, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) attended the conference.

Countries also decided to improve the cooperative mechanism for information collection, analysis and dissemination, with special emphasis on the monitoring of new drugs such as ice, ketamine and amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS), which are on the rise in the region.

Zhou Yongkang, Commissioner of China's National Narcotics Control Commission and Minister of Public Security, said poppy cultivation in the Golden Triangle had dropped remarkably since a regional drug-control MOU mechanism was established in 1993, and now it was time to make zero poppy cultivation the priority of future drug-control cooperation.

A UNODC report shows that poppy cultivation in the Golden Triangle, which borders Thailand, Myanmar and Laos, fell to 24,160 hectares last year, down 85 percent since 1998. Rubber, tea and other cash crops have been grown as substitutes.

Costa said the cooperation had been successful in information exchange and networking, poppy substitute cultivation, joint law-enforcement and drug treatment.

(China Daily 05/26/2007 page1)