DRUGS: THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENTS STOPS PINO ARLACCHI AND HIS AFGHAN AND BURMESE POLICY. NO EUROPEAN MONEY WILL GO TO UNDCP PROGRAMMES CARRIED OUT IN THOSE CONTRIES.

Strasbourg, 18 September 1998 - Sponsored by the Radical MEPs Olivier Dupuis and Gianfranco Dell'Alba, the European Parliament has adopted two urgent resolutions (on Afghanistan and Burma) that not only condemn the Taliban regime and the Burmese Junta for their violation of fundamental human rights in those countries, and the projects of crop eradication undertaken by UNDCP Chief Pino Arlacchi, but also ask the EU not to finance the two projects.

Radical Eurodeputies Olivier Dupuis, Secretary of TRP, and Gianfranco Dell'Alba have declared: "The crop eradication programmes of UNDCP Chief are, by definition, not only ineffective but also expensive. As regards Afghanistan and Burma, two countries victim of two authoritarian regimes, these programmes are a real political support to those violent regimes.

"With this vote, the European Parliament has declared that the EU should not give any money to the dangerous demagogy of Pino Arlacchi. We hope that this message will reach those, who, like Walter Veltroni, continue to bet on Arlacchi discredited at an international level.