IRANIAN AIDE SAYS EXECUTIONS NO ANSWER TO DRUGS

TEHRAN, - A top aide to moderate Iranian President
Mohammad Khatami has said executing smugglers will not solve Iran's
big drug problem, the official news agency IRNA reported on Thursday.

"Executing drug smugglers is not a suitable way to fight drugs and our
10- year experience shows that this has not been a solution," IRNA
quoted Mahmoud Alizadeh Tabatabai, Khatami's representative on drug
issues, as saying.

"The execution of this country's youth is no loss to mafia gangs which
direct the region's drug trade," he said.

Iran has executed nearly 2,000 drug dealers and traffickers since
1989, when it adopted tough laws under which possession of 30 grammes
(just over an ounce) of heroin or five kg (11 lb) of opium is
punishable by death.

Iran is a major route for the trafficking of drugs from Afghanistan
and Pakistan, the so-called "Golden Crescent", to Europe and the Gulf
Arab states.

Some 1.2 million Iranians are addicted to drugs, mostly opium, in the
country of 60 million, according to official statistics. But the head
of an anti-AIDS campaign group has put the number of drug addicts at
3.6 million.

Iran says that 2,500 of its police and soldiers have been killed in
clashes with drug traffickers in the past 20 years.