Need to disrupt fund flows to break drug-terror nexus: FM at UN session

INDIA HAS asked the global community to toughen its collective fight against the growing nexus of organised drug trafficking and terrorist networks by disrupting their financial flows, as these evils threaten peace, security and stability across regions.

“Terrorism constitutes one of the most dangerous threats to civilised societies today. Terrorism knows no borders and terrorists continue to strike cities and innocent civilians across continents,” finance minister Arun Jaitley said in his address to a special UN General Assembly session on the drug problem on Tuesday. The “growing nexus of drug trafficking and terrorist networks endangers peace, security and stability across regions,” Jaitley stressed.

In a call to the international community, he said, “we have to continue and toughen our collective fight against these evils.”he termed as a “major challenge,” money laundering and illicit financial flows and proceeds of crime generated from drug trafficking and other transnational organised crime.

“The criminal networks and drug syndicates can only be effectively busted by disrupting their financial flows,” he said at the three-day session that kicked off with the adoption by the 193-member body of the new framework on countering the world drug problem, drafted last month in Vienna by to UN body the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND). Jaitley had last week participated in the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in Washington and had held meetings with investors in the city.

Addressing the 30th Session of the UN General Assembly on World Drug Problem, Jaitley said the drug problem has global dimensions and requires collaboration across borders as it impacts nations’ ability to attain the objectives of the 2030 development agenda. He voiced India’s commitment to the three UN conventions on drug matters, emphasising that as a supplier of licit opiate raw material to the world and a traditional licit opium cultivator, India is “fully conscious” of its own responsibility to eradicate any illicit cultivation, reduce demand and put in preventive and enforcement measures.

“National efforts, however intense and sincere, cannot adequately deal with the drug problem. Bilateral, regional and international cooperation is essential in this area,” he said, adding that one such area which needs extensive international cooperation is the coordinated action against emergence and abuse of new psychoactive substances.

He pointed out that the three conventions adopted by the international community have served well in limiting and managing the drug problem and provide sufficient flexibilities to Member States.