The interior ministers of four Arab countries held talks in Jordan on Saturday to discuss ways of combatting the illegal drug trade in the region and agreed to set up a joint telecommunications cell to exchange information.
The meeting between the interior ministers of Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, saw the four officials acknowledge “that there is a big problem and it is drugs and all our societies are suffering from this problem,” Jordan’s Interior Minister Mazen Al-Faraya told reporters after the meeting.
The drug trade has been a source of tension between Jordan and Syria, with the Jordanian air force reportedly carrying out strikes in Syria’s south targeting alleged smugglers and drug manufacturing plants. Smugglers have used Jordan as a corridor in recent years to smuggle highly addictive Captagon amphetamine pills out of Syria.
The meeting in Amman came nearly a month after Syria’s foreign ministry condemned presumed Jordanian airstrikes against suspected drug traffickers on Syrian territory. In response, Jordan accused Syrian authorities of failing to take action to halt smuggling across the border.
“We agreed today that if there is no joint cooperation by the countries taking part in the meeting, there will be no results like the ones we are looking for,” Al-Faraya said.
“We agreed today that this problem exists,” Al-Faraya said, adding that the ministers agreed to continue meetings at the ministerial and technical level.
He said that the main aim of setting up the joint telecommunication cell is for officers from the four countries to exchange experience and “most importantly to trace drug shipments coming out of the countries all the way to their (shipments) final destinations.”
