China will step up co-operation with Pakistan to fight increasing drug trafficking from the "Golden Crescent" region into Northwest China, according to the Ministry of Public Security.

Senior officials from Pakistani drug prohibition departments will visit China this year for closer bilateral co-operation, the ministry said in a report on its website on Wednesday.

The efforts will boost an already intensified crackdown of the trans-national drug trade by the two countries, resulting in a number of trafficking cases in the past year.

The report said drugs produced in the Golden Crescent region, encompassing the mountain valleys of Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, pose a growing threat to China, especially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

Opium cultivation in Afghanistan rose to 165,000 hectares this year, and an unprecedented 6,100 tons of opium was harvested, said the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime this September.

About 70 per cent of Afghanistan's drugs are trafficked through Pakistan. Xinjiang, a region that neighbours Pakistan, has become one of the major areas for drug flow, according to a report by the International Herald Leader under Xinhua.

In the first nine months of this year, local police in Xinjiang's capital city Urumqi had 16 trafficking cases involving drugs from Afghanistan and Pakistan, almost double the same period last year.

Police estimated the annual consumption of heroin in Urumqi grew from 1 ton in 2000 to 7 tons, and said more drugs are being transferred from Xinjiang to other Chinese cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, as well as Russia and Eastern Europe.

"China faces a serious threat from drugs from the Golden Crescent region," said Chen Cunyi, deputy secretary general of China's National Narcotics Control Commission at a news conference in June. "To better fight against drugs, we need to have more international co-operation."

China started anti-drug co-operation with Pakistan in 1996 when the two counties signed a memorandum of understanding on drug prohibition.

The countries say the partnership has been strengthened in recent years.

The Ministry of Public Security said Pakistan intensified its airport security checks this year and seized a large amount of drugs headed to China. China's anti-drug efforts in the past year resulted in several trans-national drug trafficking cases, the ministry said.

September 17, police in Southwest China's Yunnan Province broke a drug trafficking ring, seizing 13 suspects and 430 kilograms of drugs.

Co-operation with police in the United States and the United Arab Emirates also helped break a major drug ring July 31, in which two foreign suspects were arrested and 2 kilograms of heroin seized.

China has also launched opium replacement planting schemes in the "Golden Triangle" region, an area along the Mekong River Delta including Myanmar and Laos. Rubber, tea and other cash crops have been grown as substitutes.

Due to Chinese and international efforts, opium poppy cultivation in the region has dropped to 24,160 hectares this year, down 85 per cent from eight years ago, the ministry said.