TEHRAN -- President Mohammad Khatami on Saturday said Iran needs more than lip-service from Europe and the rest of the world in its costly fight against drug trafficking and declared Tehran's readiness to cooperate with all countries to confront the menace, IRNA reported.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran is making sacrifices to halt the transit of narcotics to Europe and the rest of the world, but it believes that only paying lip-service will not unravel the tangle.

"There is a need for global resolution to fight this dangerous phenomenon which has massive economic backing," he told the staff of a drug control office here.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran is ready to cooperate with all countries to seriously fight against production and smuggling of narcotics on the global level," Khatami added.

The Iranian president summed up the country's unrecognized sacrifices, including "more than 3,400 martyrs and 10,000 disabled in the fight against trafficking and transit of narcotics".

Iran, Khatami said, has spent close to one billion U.S. dollars in order to rehabilitate the stretch of mostly barren and mountainous land on its eastern borders with Pakistan and Afghanistan -- the world's largest drug producers. Khatami, who is also the chairman of the Supreme National Security Council, cited a 70-percent rise in Iran's drug confiscations. "Only last year (which ended March 21, 2003), nine tons of morphine ready for transit (to international markets) were discovered in the country."

The Iranian president also regretted "the growth of drug production in Afghanistan, despite the Afghan central government's resolve to fight this deadly menace".

"Nearly two years have elapsed since the fall of the Taleban in Afghanistan, but no serious work has been done to reconstruct that country and save the Afghan people from poverty," he said.

Crop substitution is necessary to uproot opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, Khatami said, adding "the underprivileged farmers of Afghanistan, who have become victims of this wrong trend (poppy cultivation) in order to maintain their sustenance, need assistance". He called the impact of the "ominous drug blight" graver than that of terrorism, war, and domination, and said, "Undoubtedly, drugs are among the most ominous phenomena of our time, which need an enormous sum to fight against."

"Unfortunately, the destructive impact of social maladies resulting from narcotics, including robbery, murder, corruption, and AIDS, is so grave that it threatens the lives, self-esteem, economy, and culture of world communities, especially the youth," Khatami said.

"All countries, irrespective of political differences, hold common views on fighting drugs and they need to fight with a global resolution this ominous phenomenon which is dragging the moral and material lives of humans to gradual destruction," he added.

Iran, due to its geographic position, is faced with additional problems with respect to drug trafficking, the president said.

The country straddles major international drug transit routes of from Afghanistan and Pakistan, better known as the Golden Crescent, on their way to lucrative markets in Europe, the Persian Gulf, and Central Asia.

The campaign has won plaudits from the international community, but the Islamic Republic has regularly complained that it needs more than conciliatory messages in a war which it wages almost single-handedly.

According to official estimates, Iran's anti-drug campaign costs the country 800 million U.S. dollars each year.

Iran accounts for 80 percent of the opium and 90 percent of the morphine intercepted worldwide, according to the International Narcotics Control Board.