Events

MINSK, 10 October (BelTA) – Belarus took part in the discussion about crime control and the illegal turnover of narcotics in the UN General Assembly as the country that presides in the Commonwealth of Independent States in 2014, the press service of the Belarusian Foreign Ministry told BelTA.

Belarusian Deputy Foreign Minister Valentin Rybakov raised several problems that the CIS states face, including organized crime as one of the sources used to finance terrorism, corruption, transit and sales of narcotics, the application of information and communication technologies for illegal goals.

According to Valentin Rybakov, the measures that the CIS states take at the national level should be coupled with multilateral actions. Cooperation between the CIS states and specialized UN institutions, primarily the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, plays a special role in the process. The Belarusian Deputy Foreign Minister mentioned cooperation with the UNODC in fighting slave trade as a positive example. At the same time as the CIS presiding country Belarus called upon the UNODC to exercise more efforts to provide technical aid to countries in the region for the sake of fighting crime-related threats and challenges.

The diplomat said he was confident that the resolution on CIS-UN cooperation that Belarus will present on behalf of the CIS states during the current session of the UN General Assembly will give a new impulse to interaction between the Commonwealth of Independent States and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.