Iran has joined a chorus of Muslim and developing nations in criticizing the wording of a recent UN document on AIDS –but appears unable to paper over its own exploding problem with AIDS and drugs.
Last week, Iran's ambassador to the United Nations, Bagher Asadi, was quoted as saying that some paragraphs of a key UN document on AIDS “have been found terribly unacceptable by quite a sizeable number of developing countries, not necessarily Muslim countries."
Cultural sensitivities had to be accommodated if agreement was to be reached, he said in an interview with AFP.
"Thank God we do not have any particular difficulties with this pandemic in Iran, for a host of reasons, mainly because of the culture -- Islamic culture and traditional culture," he said.
However, Iran apparently has plenty of complicated drug and AIDS-related problems, according to the Iran News, which in a Tuesday editorial called for the free distribution of syringes to drug addicts to stop the spread of AIDS.
The reformist paper said that drug use was rising alarmingly in Iran despite heavy penalties.
"Our prisons are full of addicts,” the English-language Iran News said in an editorial marking International Anti-Drugs Day, cited by AFP.
Most of Iran's AIDS sufferers have contracted the disease through contaminated needles, the paper noted.
"The general practice in most countries is to distribute free [hypodermic] needles and syringes," it said. "We must undertake a similar practice, as well.”
The paper said that 300,000 addicts out of a total 2.5 million injected drugs, and 70 percent of AIDS cases were caused by contaminated shared needles.
Iran's prisons, where an estimated 70 percent of inmates have been incarcerated for drugs-related offences, are at major risk of contracting AIDS through smuggled needles.
The report contains still more alarming statistics.
An estimated six million Iranians, nearly 10 percent of the population, is estimated to use drugs to some extent.
The police have rounded up some 3,000 drug addicts and small-time dealers during a massive sweep in Tehran over the last few days.
Official figures put the number of AIDS cases at 2,721, up 23 percent from last November, while more than 10,000 carry the HIV virus that causes the disease. But experts say the real figures are higher, according to the agency.
Besides fighting AIDS, Iran has yet another war to deal with, this one also directly connected to drugs.
More than 3,000 soldiers have been killed in the Islamic republic’s war against drug traffickers, who use the country as a transit area.
A May 3 report by Newsday.com called Iran the “unwilling corridor for a crop that peaked at over 4,500 tons in 1999.” As one Western diplomat in Tehran told the online news service, “It’s a war up there, it really is. The smugglers are well-funded and they use all the latest technology. They’re ruthless.”
A June report by Eurasianet.org notes that the Iranian Parliament recently allocated $116 million to increase security along the border with Afghanistan -- funding that might become less crucial if drug suppliers around the Golden Triangle fail to switch to the Iran route.
However, “We have to remember that stockpiles of raw and…semi-refined opium were already available in Afghanistan,” Sandro Tucci, spokesman for the Office of Drug Control and Crime Prevention’s director general, told Albawaba.com from the agency’s Vienna headquarters in a previous report.
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
