BUSHEHR, Bushehr Province Qatari Minister of the Interior, Sheikh Abdullah Khalifa al-Thani, is to pay a state visit to this southern city next Sunday, a senior official said here Thursday. Abbas Tabarroki, official with the provincial Drug Control Headquarters told IRNA that during the visit, Iran and Qatar are to implement contracts signed in early October during a visit to Doha of Iran's Police Chief General Mohsen Ansari at which they discussed security issues and also drug fight. He said that the Qatari minister's visit takes place at the invitation of his Iranian counterpart Abdolvahed Mousavi Lari, who also went to Qatar in early October. "Since Bushehr lies adjacent to the Persian Gulf, drug-traffickers use it as a transit route for transfer of drugs to the Arab states," the official said. Tabarroki called on all international bodies to help Iran fight this scourge of mankind. Iran lies on the main drug transit route from Afghanistan and Pakistan, the so-called "golden crescent", to the lucrative markets of Europe and the oil-rich Arab states. It also suffers from a domestic drug abuse problem with a large number of addicts and recreative users in a population of 63 million. Lari told a press conference in Tehran Tuesday that police had killed some 740 drug smugglers and bandits on the porous eastern border in recent months. He blasted the international community for its "indifference" to the Islamic Republic's ongoing battle against growing drug trafficking in the region. "We want to make it clear that the international community has done nothing but talk and praise us, without giving us any practical support," he said.

(IRNA)