Cambodia seeks UN help in its fight against drugs
Cambodia seeks UN help in its fight against drugs
PHNOM PENH (Agencies): Cambodia asked the United Nations
yesterday for help in its fight against drug abuse and
trafficking.
Cambodia's co-premier Hun Sen made the request in talks with
Giorgio Giacomelli, executive director of the United Nations'
International Drug Control Program (UNDCP), who is visiting
Cambodia.
"The government requested the UN representative... to train
our technical drug staff very clearly how to identify different
kinds of drugs," Nouv Kanun, secretary of state of the council of
ministers, told Reuters.
Hun Sen also asked for help in cutting the flow of drugs
through Cambodia, he said. Giacomelli had promised to help as
much as possible, he said.
UNDCP officials say traffickers increasingly use Cambodia as a
transshipment point for heroin from the Golden Triangle opium-
growing region where Myanmar, Laos and Thailand meet.
Meanwhile, prompted by reports of massive truancy and gambling
and fighting among high-school students, police here have raided
and closed eight snooker parlors located near schools, a report
said yesterday.
Nearly 300 snooker balls and about 100 snooker cues as well as
video games have been seized since the beginning of the month
since teachers complained about large numbers of their students
skipping class to frequent the parlors, the Khmer-language Rasmei
Kampuchea (Light of Cambodia) newspaper reported.
Acting under a regulation that prohibits snooker clubs and
video arcades from operating within 150 meters of schools, the
police returned the confiscated equipment to its owners after
they signed affidavits saying they would move their operations,
the paper said.
Snooker has become highly popular with Cambodians, especially
young men, as the country has become more prosperous following
more than two decades of civil war.
Hundreds of snooker clubs, many of them catering to the
upscale market, have opened in the capital in the past two years
while smaller, seedier streetside snooker stands remain immensely
popular.