The Hindu : International : Tajikistan: Russia scores over U.S.

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Sunday, Jun 06, 2004

International

International

Tajikistan: Russia scores over U.S.

By Vladimir Radyuhin

MOSCOW, JUNE 5. Moscow scored a major win over Washington in their battle for domination of ex-Soviet Central Asia by persuading Tajikistan to drop its demand for an early pullout of Russian border guards and to grant permanent status to a Russian military base in the ex-Soviet Central Asian republic.

Meeting the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, at the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi on Friday the Tajik President, Imomali Rakhmonov, asked him to extend the Russian border guards' stay until the end of 2006, a Kremlin spokesman said. Earlier Tajikistan insisted the guards should leave by mid-2005. Russia's 9,000 border guards patrol 90 per cent of Tajikistan's border with opium-producing Afghanistan.

Tajikistan also agreed to hand over to Russia "for free and permanent use" the land for the establishment of a Russian military base in Tajikistan, Mr. Putin's foreign policy advisor, Sergei Prikhodko, told reporters after the meeting. Dushanbe has been dragging its feet over granting a permanent legal status to the 11,000-strong Russian army division deployed in Tajikistan in the hope of winning economic and defence aid from the United States and other NATO countries. The U.S. has deployed about 3,000 troops at Tajik air bases in addition to bigger military presence in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan and has poured millions of dollars in Tajik infrastructure and military projects.

The U.S. think-tank, Strategic Forecasting Inc., last month hailed the coming withdrawal of the Russian military from Tajikistan as a "strategic victory" for Washington.

However, Moscow has expressed fears that the pullout of its troops and border guards would open the Tajik border to drug trafficking from Afghanistan. Washington's European allies appear to share Russian concerns, since 70 per cent of opium and 100 per cent of heroin reaching Europe come from Afghanistan via Tajikistan and Russia. In the past few weeks the chiefs of staff of the British and French armies descended on Tajikistan. The head of the United Nations drug-control agency, Mario Costa, who also visited Dushanbe recently, said he was "worried by the news (of Russian withdrawal)."

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