- MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian
President Vladimir Putin on Thursday accused foreign forces in Afghanistan
of letting the drugs trade run out of control -- one week after the United
States itself rebuked Afghanistan for the booming business.
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- "They're doing almost nothing, not even just to
reduce the drugs problem," Interfax news agency quoted Putin as telling
Viktor Cherkesov, head of Russia's drugs control agency.
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- With no troops in Afghanistan, Russia tries to stem the
flow of illegal drugs by catching traffickers as they leave Afghanistan
and enter ex-Soviet Tajikistan across a border almost entirely policed
by Russian border guards.
-
- International peacekeepers, now under NATO leadership,
have been in Afghanistan since the U.S.-led invasion of late 2001.
-
- But critics have said the peacekeeping mission is too
small -- covering little of the country outside Kabul -- and the U.S. government
has further undermined it by starting a costly war in Iraq before securing
peace in Afghanistan.
-
- "They should get more involved and not just watch
as caravans roam all over Afghanistan, then through the (former Soviet
Union) to the West," Putin said.
-
- Tajikistan will take the mountainous border under its
full control by 2006 despite fears that after being ravaged by a 1992-97
civil war it can't afford the necessary equipment.
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- Last month Russian troops seized one tonne of Afghan
heroin. But the United Nations says many times that amount hit Europe's
streets last year -- 90 percent from Afghanistan.
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- Putin said the states involved in Afghanistan were blind
to the real issue.
-
- "They should understand the threat posed by Afghan
drugs and not try to hide it from the public," he said, calling for
far greater international cooperation.
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- U.S. President George W. Bush, campaigning for reelection,
touts democratic changes in Afghanistan as a sign of progress in the war
on terrorism, and told a rally last week that Afghans -- also preparing
for a presidential election -- were "now free".
-
- But a White House report published the same day put the
onus for dealing with drugs on the Afghan government itself.
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