DUSHANBE, October 5, Asia-Plus  -- Tajik Drug Control Agency (DCA) has brunt a largest-ever amount of drugs in the presence of Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Antonio Maria Costa.  

            Officers from the Tajik counternarcotics agency burned some 1,100 kilograms of drugs, with 90 percent of them being heroin, in Dushanbe today morning.   

The drugs were confiscated in the course of 2006-07.  

            The source at a DCA said that Mr. Antonio Maria Costa will attend the CIS summit meeting that will be held in the Tajik capital today afternoon.  The summit is expected to consider issues related to countering drug threat.   

Mr. Antonio Maria Costa (Italy) was appointed in May 2002 Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and Director-General of the United Nations Office in Vienna (UNOV). He holds the rank of Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations.

Mr. Costa was born on 16 June 1941 in Italy. He holds a degree in political science from the University of Turin (1963), a Degree in mathematical economics from the Moscow State University (1967), and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley (1971).