Over 2 tons of drugs confiscated on Tajik-Afghani border in 2003

Over 2 tons of drugs, 1.2 out of which are heroin, have been confiscated on the Tajik-Afghani border since the beginning of 2003, First Deputy Head of the Federal Frontier Service /FPS/, Head of the FPS Joint Staff Nikolai Reznichenko stated at a press conference on Monday.

According to him, last year for the first time the strong drug heroin made up over 50 per cent of the total amount of drugs confiscated on the Tajik-Afghani border. "This year the trend is being preserved," Reznichenko stressed.

When giving comments on a possibility to create security belts around Afghanistan to prevent drug trafficking from that country, Reznichenko pointed out that "so far the Russian Federal Frontier Service had not conducted any negotiations on the issue with frontier departments of other states bordering on Afghanistan." He also pointed to the objective necessity to create "such security belts to prevent drug trafficking from Afghanistan, which the Russian side had proposed at the recent International conference in Paris on drug smuggling from Afghanistan." "If the international community finances the Russian frontier troops on the Tajik-Afghani border as well, we will be able to guarantee confiscation of a big amount of drugs in this direction," Reznichenko stressed.

Reznichenko also said that the Russian frontier group on the Tajik-Afghani border and the Tajik agency for combating drug did not conceal the amount of drugs confiscated on the Tajik-Afghani border. "However, Afghanistan does not only border on Tajikistan," Reznichenko recalled. "And, according to FPS information, drugs from Afghanistan do not come to Tajikistan alone, but also to other countries bordering on Afghanistan."