We have a collective responsibility to ensure that the poorest of the poor are not the ones who pay the price for successes in drug control. The progress that Laos has made is quite momentous.

You have done great work in seizing drugs and precursors, prosecuting drug-related crimes and seizing weapons and ammunition.

It is of the greatest concern that, more than one year later, the seized cocaine has not been destroyed.

The progress that Laos has made is quite momentous when we consider that until the mid-1990s, it was the third-largest producer of illicit opium in the world.

The United Nations would like to invite the government to take very tough measures against those governors, or those officials, whether civilians, military police, who are involved in cultivation or refining or trafficking. We wish the government persevered in making its own legal instruments available to the international community, so that traffickers can be extradited.

Unless strong measures are taken in the course of 2006, we risk witnessing a reversal.