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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bentway who wrote (687283)	6/25/2005 5:43:59 PM
From: goldworldnet	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Afghan heroin output growing rapidly, Russia says By Roman Kozhevnikov news.yahoo.com Fri Jun 24, 9:11 AM ET Russia, whose last border guard left the Tajik-Afghan border last week, said on Friday Afghanistan's heroin output was growing at breakneck speed and presented a threat to the world community. "The area sown to opium poppy is rising, and there must be no illusions about it," Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov told journalists on the sidelines of a defense ministers' meeting of nine ex-Soviet states. "Heroin output is growing by leaps and bounds, and this is Europe's problem, to say the least, although in fact it is a topical issue for the international community as a whole." Afghan President Hamid Karzai said last week the area sown to opium in his country would fall by as much as 40 percent this year. In 2004, Afghan farmers planted about 327,000 acres of opium poppies. But Ivanov's concerns echoed similar fears voiced by the United Nations and a few Western ambassadors to Tajikistan who said there were serious doubts that the impoverished nation would be able to effiaiently protect its lengthy and rugged border with Afghanistan from a flood of drugs. A prominent Russian parliamentarian said last week Russian border guards might return to the border if Tajik Border Committee servicemen who took full control of the border fail to bar drug traffic from Afghanistan. Russia first started patrolling the border more than 100 years ago when Tajikistan was a colony of the Russian empire and continued doing so after the Central Asian state's independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Tajikistan, slowly recovering after a 1992-97 civil war that killed over 100,000 people, insisted upon taking full control of the 1,344-km (840-mile) Afghan border, seeing it as reasserting sovereignty over its own territory. The move briefly soured ties with Moscow until Tajikistan gave Russia a base for the 7,000 soldiers still stationed there. Earlier this year Tajikistan appealed to the international community, asking for $100 million in aid to buy the necessary equipment and help boost border controls. "Meeting (Russian) President Vladimir Putin yesterday, I asked him to double the quota for Tajik military servicemen studying in Russian military schools, especially for border guards," said Tajik President Imomali Rakhmonov. U.N. statistics show that Tajikistan holds the third place in the world according to the volume of drugs it intercepts. Afghan heroin costs just $1,000 per kg (2.2 lb.) at the Tajik border. It then makes its way to Russia across vast but sparsely populated Central Asia. Prices soar to $100,000 per kg or more when the drug reaches Western Europe. * * *