The United Nations would like to invite the government to take very tough measures against those governors, or those officials, whether civilians, military police, who are involved in cultivation or refining or trafficking. We wish the government persevered in making its own legal instruments available to the international community, so that traffickers can be extradited.

The world will have a powerful new tool to control corruption on a scale that has never existed before.

You have done great work in seizing drugs and precursors, prosecuting drug-related crimes and seizing weapons and ammunition.

We have a collective responsibility to ensure that the poorest of the poor are not the ones who pay the price for successes in drug control. The progress that Laos has made is quite momentous.

States are required to return money and other assets obtained through corruption to the country from which they were stolen.

It is of the greatest concern that, more than one year later, the seized cocaine has not been destroyed.

Unless strong measures are taken in the course of 2006, we risk witnessing a reversal.

The progress that Laos has made is quite momentous when we consider that until the mid-1990s, it was the third-largest producer of illicit opium in the world.