MOSCOW, August 6 (Itar-Tass) —— Russia’s State Duma is alarmed about lower efficiency of prevention drug traffic in the Central Asian Region /CAR/.
Chairman of the Duma’s core committee on security Vladimir Vasilyev /United Russia/ presented to Itar-Tass evidence supporting the development of dangerous trends. He supported the position of the State Duma’s Speaker Boris Gryzlov, who, among other things, pointed in a recent article in the Nezavisimaya Gazeta to a possibility of introducing a visa regime with Tajikistan to combat drug dealers. The words of the head of the parliament’s lower chamber caused mixed reactions in Dushanbe.
“Over past three years, Afghanistan reached steadily the first place in the world in production of hashish, – Vasilyev stated. – More than 90 percent of heroin in the world is produced in Afghanistan today. And the supplies to Russia for the past 10 years increased by 12 times.”
“At the same time, effectiveness of combating drug trafficking in CAR has declined substantially,” – he said. According to his information, in Tajikistan during this time period heroin seizures dropped by 77 percent – from 4.2 tons in 2001 to 985 kilograms in 2010. Seizures of opium declined by 80 percent.
At the same time, “if in 2001, the proportion of heroin seized in Tajikistan in relation to the seizures of the drug in the CAR made 82 percent, in 2010 this figure fell to 40 percent,” Vasilyev said. He also informed that “until the withdrawal of Russian border guards units from Tajikistan /July 2005/, the republic ranked third in the world after China and Turkey /results for 2004/ in seizures of heroin. Meanwhile, reports for 2009 say that in heroin seizures Tajikistan ranked eleventh, behind Iran, Turkey, China, Russia, USA, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Britain, Bulgaria and Italy, and in 2010 behind Uzbekistan, too.
In this context, the chairman of the Duma’s committee said that at the regular meeting of the CSTO Parliamentary Assembly in September-October 2011 in Minsk participants had suggested discussing organisation of a permanent conference of parliamentary chairmen of committees /commissions/ on defence and security of the CSTO member countries.