Stemming the flow of illicit drugs from Afghanistan and curbing international terrorism and child pornography will top the agenda at a meeting of G8 interior ministers yesterday, officials say.
Britain's top law enforcement official, Home Secretary Charles Clarke, said 87 percent of heroin and other narcotics came from Afghanistan, despite international efforts led by Britain to stem opium poppy cultivation there.
"The progress we would have liked to see has not happened," said Clarke, briefing reporters in advance of the summit. "It is a big concern. That is why we have put it on the agenda."
Afghanistan last year supplied more than 90 percent of the world's opium, the raw material for heroin, sparking warnings that the country was turning into a narco-state just three years after the fall of the Taliban.
Britain is working closely with Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government to tackle the problem. A five-point plan developed in the latter half of last year includes promotion of alternative crops for poppy farmers, ground eradication and interdiction of heroin labs and storage facilities.
The plan appears to be failing, however. Earlier this year a US report said the area in Afghanistan devoted to poppy cultivation last year set a record of more than 206,000 hectares, more than triple the figure for 2003.
"There are a whole string of issues here which are both about the economy of the country, about the systems of controls, about the political issues and it is all that we will be reviewing," Clarke told reporters Wednesday, on the condition that he was not quoted until the opening day of the two day summit in Sheffield, northern England.
Britain is chairing the G8 this year and has already hosted a summit of finance ministers from Japan, the US, Canada, Russia, France, Germany and Italy. The country's leaders will meet in Gleneagles, Scotland, on July 6 to July 8.
The interior ministers will also discuss counter terrorism and will be briefed by the director-general of Britain's MI5 security service, Eliza Manningham-Buller.
"We are working to prevent a new generation of terrorists by analyzing why individuals choose a path of violence and how, for example, they use the Internet to promote radicalization and recruitment," Clarke said.
In related news, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said before a crucial EU summit starting yesterday that Britain's EU budget rebate was no longer justified.
"There is absolutely no justification any longer for the British rebate," Schroeder told the German parliament in a debate on EU policy ahead of the two-day summit.
"Britain is the sixth biggest per capita beneficiary of the EU budget but ranks far below that as a contributor."
He said if the British annual rebate were maintained as it is, it would soon reach more than 7 billion euros (US$8.5 billion) versus 4.5 billion euros currently.
Schroeder described the controversy over the rebate as the "key point" in the debate over the EU's 2007-2013 budget. Germany is the biggest EU contributor nation.
Under a compromise plan unveiled Wednesday, the EU presidency maintained plans to freeze the long-cherished rebate but would drop a reference to then cutting the refund.
The bid to avoid deadlock at the summit also suggested linking the rebate's evolution to agricultural aid after 2013.
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