NATO "indifferent" to Afghan drugs problem -- Iran

By Zahra Hosseinian

TEHRAN, May 7 (Reuters) - Iran accused NATO on Wednesday of being indifferent towards Afghanistan's growing drugs problem and called on European states to help Tehran fight smuggling of heroin and other narcotics from its neighbour.

Iran is on a heroin smuggling route to the West from the opium fields of Afghanistan, the world's number one producer of the opium poppy, which is processed to make heroin.

"The exploding growth in the cultivation of opium ... in Afghanistan last year has created many problems ... especially for Iran," said Ismail Ahmadi Moghaddam, secretary of Iran's drug control headquarters.

Iranian officials say the United States, its old foe, has failed to combat drugs in Afghanistan after U.S.-led forces ousted the Islamist Taliban government in 2001.

"We think NATO and foreign forces in Afghanistan are indifferent to the issue of drugs and have put other goals as their priorities," Ahmadi Moghaddam told a conference.

The alliance has about 50,000 troops in Afghanistan.

"Since the time they entered (Afghanistan) we are witnessing an explosive rise in the production of drugs," he told the meeting in Tehran of officials from Pakistan, Afghanistan and the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

Iran is spending $600 million a year to prevent drugs coming from Afghanistan on the way to Europe, Ahmadi Moghaddam said.