UNITED NATIONS, March 20 (UPI) -- The U.N.'s senior envoy to Afghanistan called on the international community and the Afghan government to promote stability.
"The threat to peace has not diminished," the special representative for Afghanistan Tom Koenigs told the U.N. Security Council Tuesday.
"To be candid, international participation needs to improve," he said.
Koenigs also pressed Kabul to do more to fulfill its role as called for in the Afghanistan Compact, a five-year U.N.-backed blueprint launched early last year which sets benchmarks for security, governance and development goals.
Also briefing the council, U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa reported on its latest Afghanistan survey, which offered a varied picture marked by some progress but also serious threats posed by terrorism and illicit drug revenue.
While opium cultivation in the center-north of the country is decreasing, thanks to improved security conditions and development, in the south, "the vicious circle of drugs funding terrorism and terrorism supporting drug lords is stronger than ever,' he said. "Afghanistan's drug problem occurs in a security vacuum, where illicit crops coexist with other criminal activities that support such cultivation."
Costa recommended improved border management, bringing major drug traffickers to justice and ending corruption as three tactics to combat Afghanistan's illicit drug production.
"Terrorism, narcotics, weak State institutions and the slow pace of reconstruction are among our main challenges," Afghanistan's representative Zahir Tanin said at the meeting. "As such, it would be safe to state that we have jointly underestimated the magnitude of the challenges facing Afghanistan."
