Tajik President: early to speak of victory over terrorism in Afghanistan

In spite of the successful antiterrorist operation in Afghanistan, "there is no ground yet to say that terrorism is suppressed once and for all, extremism beaten, separatism defeated", Tajik President Emomaly Rakhmonov announced at the summit of the Shanghai Organization of Cooperation (SCO) in St.Petersburg on Friday.

According to him, military fight is "merely one of the constituents" of opposing international terrorism. "Hunger, misery and poverty" feed on this evil, the president remarked. The developed countries's support of the poorer ones must become "a preventive measure against terrorism", Emomaly Rakhmonov underlined.

Since the beginning of the counterterrorist operation the flow of drugs from Afghanistan has not reduced, but manifested a trend for growth, increasing by some 15% last year, he added. The drug smuggling incomes are used "not for the daily bread, but financing extremists', terrorists' and separatists' activities," Rakhmonov pointed out.

"Tajikistan is for activizing the regional antiterrorist structure /RATS/ in the framework of the SCO, the process of contacts and consultations between these countries' law enforcement bodies, secret and frontier services," Rakhmonov stressed. According to him, a declaration and agreement on establishing the RATS, which will be signed today, are to create a legal basis for it."