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India's Modi expresses support for Duterte's drug war — Palace

January 25, 2018 | 9:24pm

India's Modi expresses support for Duterte's drug war â�� Palace

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (R) welcomes President of Philippines Rodrigo Roa Duterte ahead of a meeting on the sidelines of ASEAN-INDIA Commemorative Summit in New Delhi on January 24, 2018. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will host 10 Southeast Asian leaders as guests of honour at India's Republic Day celebrations as New Delhi seeks to blunt China's influence in the region. The leaders will also attend a commemorative summit on January 25 to mark a quarter century of ties with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the foreign ministry said January 24. Prakash Singh/AFP

NEW DELHI — Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has expressed support for President Rodrigo Duterte’s campaign against narcotics and called for stronger cooperation against illegal drugs, Malacañang said Thursday.

Presidential spokesman Harry Roque said the drug menace was one of the topics discussed during Modi’s meeting with Duterte last Wednesday.

“When the prime minister expressed his support for the ongoing concern of our president, Philippine President Duterte, against drugs, he, in fact, said that there might be a need for international cooperation to deal with the menace of drugs,” Roque, who was present during the meeting, said in a press conference here.

“The prime minister highlighted that it should be of the same scale and scope as the international cooperation that we have today on climate change,” he added.

Efforts to mitigate climate change have gained support from several governments. A 2015 climate agreement that seeks to limit global warming by cutting carbon emissions has been ratified by 174 countries.

The problem of illegal drugs is one of the issues being addressed by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The regional bloc has crafted a work plan on securing communities against illicit drugs to coordinate strategies to achieve a drug-free ASEAN.

READ: India and Philippines: Decades of ties, different ways of dealing with China

Roque said Duterte took some time explaining to Modi his war on drugs, a campaign that has drawn flak among human rights advocates who believe that it encourages summary killings.

“The prime minister said that he realizes that the threat of drugs to young people is very, very serious,” Roque said.

Modi raised the drug menace issue during the G13 summit, where he also stressed that drug traffickers use proceeds from their illicit trade to fund terrorist activities.

“The Philippine president, of course, highlighted that the threat to terrorism in the Philippines and in the region is also financed partly through the trafficking in drugs,” Roque said.

The Philippine National Police has conducted more than 64,000 anti-drug operations, which resulted in the arrest of 102,069 drug personalities.

More than 19,000 "homicide" cases were recorded since the start of the drug war two years ago, about 2,200 of them drug-related.

Duterte has promised to continue his bloody war on illegal drugs “until the last drug pusher is out of the streets.”