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MOSCOW: CIS body chief calls to curb flow of drugs from Afghanistan

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  • MOSCOW: CIS body chief calls to curb flow of drugs from Afghanistan

    CIS security body chief calls for action to curb flow of drugs from
    Afghanistan

    Interfax news agency
    22 Jun 05

    Moscow, 22 June: Troops of the antiterrorist coalition in Afghanistan
    are effectively failing to take action in the struggle against the
    production of narcotics in this country, the secretary-general of the
    Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), Nikolay Bordyuzha,
    said in an interview with Russian news agency Interfax today. The
    members of the CSTO are Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
    Tajikistan and Armenia.

    "During the entire period that the antiterror coalition has been
    active not a single illegal narcotics laboratory (in Afghanistan) has
    been destroyed. When I asked a US general why this was the case, he
    told me that they had not been given the task of waging war on
    narcotics, and that is why they are not waging this war," Bordyuzha
    said.

    According to the information of the Russian federal drugs control
    agency, most narcotics, in particular 90 per cent of the heroin, that
    enter Russia come from Afghanistan via Central Asian countries.

    Bordyuzha noted that last week responsibility for guarding the
    Tajik-Afghan border was passed completely from Russian border guards
    to service personnel of the Tajik State Border Protection Committee.

    "The departure from Tajikistan of Russian border guards, who had a
    fairly efficient system for guarding the border could, of course, lead
    to a growth in drug-trafficking from Afghanistan," Bordyuzha said.

    He went on to say that "a growth in drug-trafficking is possible
    because everyone is noting a rise in the amount of opium sown in
    Afghanistan".

    "The growth of drug-trafficking from Afghanistan is dangerous. And, to
    be frank, neither special services nor law-enforcement agencies are
    coping with the flow of drugs," the CSTO general-secretary said.

    He stressed that the CSTO member-states should assist Tajik border
    guards with the guarding of the Tajik-Afghan border.

    At the moment the border guard department of the Russian Federal
    Security Service [FSB] in Tajikistan is being transformed into an
    operational border group, which will begin operating from 2006.

    It will not include actual troops. The service personnel in the group
    will act as advisers and will help Tajik border guards with training
    personnel and guarding the border.
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