US Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton's use of the term ``narco state' to describe Afghanistan in a recent Senate testimony has caught the attention of her Afghan counterpart. Foreign Ministry Rangin Dadfar Spanta said Saturday that it is ``absolutely wrong' to classify Afghanistan as such, though the minister readily admitted that Afghanistan is a major producer of drugs.
``Madame Clinton is a good friend of Afghanistan, a close friend of ours,' Spanta told The Associated Press in an interview arranged to rebut Clinton's classification of Afghanistan. ``But if somebody believes that our government, the government of President (Hamid) Karzai is involved as a government entity in the production of drugs, this is absolutely wrong.'
Spanta was reacting to a report in the Financial Times on Friday that quoted Clinton as calling Afghanistan a ``narco state' whose government was ``plagued by limited capacity and widespread corruption.' The comments appeared in Clinton's written Senate testimony for her nomination as Secretary of State.