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  • Russia To Post Drugs Police Abroad

    RUSSIA TO POST DRUGS POLICE ABROAD

    Gazeta.ru website, Moscow
    28 Mar 06

    Russia's counternarcotics agency is to send 50 of its staff abroad to
    work out of Russian embassies, with the first representatives going to
    the Russian embassy in Kabul. Later, staff of the Federal Service for
    Control over the Trafficking of Narcotics and Psychotropic Substances
    will be sent to Armenia and Belarus, and to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and
    Tajikistan, countries which the service says are now staging posts on
    the drug-trafficking route from Afghanistan northwards. The following
    is the text of report by Russian Gazeta.ru website on 28 March:

    Staffers of Gosnarkokontrol [Federal Service for Control over the
    Trafficking of Narcotics and Psychotropic Substances] are going to be
    working under Russian diplomatic missions abroad. The relevant edict
    has been signed by [President] Vladimir Putin. Experts are doubtful
    whether these people will succeed in halting the flow of narcotics.

    On the other hand, human rights champions believe that maybe this
    will teach the narcotics control service how to work and not to just
    hound veterinary surgeons through the courts.

    On Tuesday [28 March] Vladimir Putin signed an edict "On official
    representatives of the Russian Federation Federal Service for Control
    over the Trafficking of Narcotics in Foreign States". According to this
    document the service is authorized to have official representatives
    and their deputies abroad numbering a total of 50 persons. These
    staffers are to work as part of the diplomatic missions but without
    being included on the embassy staff roll. It is assumed that this
    will simplify the service's contacts with their foreign colleagues.

    A mission of the Gosnarkokontrol, as one of the first, will open in
    Afghanistan from where the main mass of heroin makes its way both
    onto the Russian and the world drugs markets.

    As Gazeta.ru was told by Oleg Kharichkin, deputy director of the
    Russian Federation Federal Service for Control Over the Trafficking
    of Narcotics, staffers periodically travel as it is to that country
    but they will now stay in Kabul on a permanent basis. Later, the
    service's missions will also be opened in states belonging to the
    Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) - Armenia, Belarus,
    Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. According to Kharichkin,
    "this will be especially timely in those countries which are becoming
    staging posts on the northern route for the movement of narcotics into
    our country. That is, on the route for the trafficking of narcotics
    out of Afghanistan. It is also assumed that Gosnarkokontrol staffers
    will be sent to other Asian states and also to countries of Latin
    America and Europe.

    The service director will decide who will be going abroad, after which,
    as Kharichkin explained, "the candidacies of these staffers will have
    to be coordinated with the Foreign Ministry and with the states to
    which they are being sent".

    According to Kharichkin, it is assumed that two staffers will work
    in the missions. "Most likely people able to speak the language of
    the country where they will be working will be sent there," he added.

    According to Kharichkin, the experience of such missions is not
    unique. The DEA - the American Drug Enforcement Administration -
    works according to the same principle. The Russian office of the US
    drugs police is in the embassy building in Moscow.

    In the opinion of human rights champions, there will certainly be no
    harm done by the new Gosnarkontrol subdivision, but at the moment it
    is not clear how much benefit will derive from it.

    "International contacts are necessary and there can be no particular
    objections here. After all, these drugs police will not be keeping
    tabs on the staffers of the embassies," Gazeta.ru was told by Lev
    Levinson, head of the New Drugs Policy public organization. "It is
    better to direct one's efforts at something serious than to engage
    in dubious affairs in one's own country." Especially as, according
    to him, other countries also have an interest in this: After all,
    Russia is also a transit zone for narcotics. "Apart from Afghanistan,
    'synthetic drugs' are brought into Russia from Poland, Germany, and
    the Baltic States, and cocaine is brought in from South America. So
    there is certainly something to work on," he believes.

    Oleg Zykov, president of the No to Alcoholism and Drug Addiction
    Foundation is of the same opinion. "I welcome any structural
    subdivision if it is going to be effective. I hope that this is a
    movement in the direction of control over hard drugs," Zykov says.

    "In any case, if these representatives are going to end up in
    countries where there is a positive experience of, and not repressive
    technologies for, combating drugs, they might at least borrow their
    experience."
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