Azerbaijan, Russia to cooperate in fighting drug trafficking

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13/1 Tass 267

BAKU, January 13 (Itar-Tass) - Azerbaijan and Russia signed an
agreement on cooperation in fighting drug trafficking, psychedelic
substances and their precursors on Thursday, following talks between
visiting director of Russia's drug control service (FSKN) Viktor Ivanov
and Azerbaijan's Minister for National Security Eldar Makhmudov.
The parties will exchange information, including intelligence on
drugs, drug mules, batches of supplied narcotics, drug trafficking routes,
and joint operations/search events," Ivanov said.
Russia-Azerbaijan cooperation in this field is not built from scratch.
"We're working in accordance with an approved plan signed two yeas ago,"
the FSKN director said underlining that he viewed bilateral cooperation as
"extremely fruitful."
"It helped police intercept a large batch of Afghan hashish -- more
than one ton -- in 2010, as it was headed for Russia through Azerbaijan
and the Caspian Sea," Ivanov said.
He noted that the geography of the smuggling routes of this kind of
narcotic was quite extensive, and that it was actually siphoned through
the Southern Federal District, including the Rostov Region, Moscow, St.
Petersburg, the country's northwest, and a number of provinces in Siberia.
"So we might say Afghan hashish trafficking is transnational, because
the length of its supply routes exceeds several thousand kilometers. In
2010, Russian drug police seized 3.5 tons of hashish," the FSKN chief
said, noting that it is impossible to effectively counteract drug
trafficking without cooperation.
In the course of the talks in Baku, the parties agreed that drug
trafficking created three big problems for Russia and Azerbaijan.
The first is the criminalization of the situation along drug smuggling
routes, the appearance of criminal groups involved in drug trafficking;
the second is the increasing number of drug addicts, in the first place,
among young people, and, consequently the emergence of an army of drug
addicts, which causes high mortality rates and expands the drug sales
market; and the third is the establishment of drug cartels that
destabilize the situation making breeding ground for the manifestations of
terrorism, Ivanov said.
He said Afghan hashish was a permanent source to fund militants
operating in the North Caucasus.
-0-myz/kud