05 September 2001 00:00
CONCERNING THE NARCO-SITUATION IN RUSSIA
2001-09-04-001
Despite the action taken by the international community against illegal drug trafficking, the situation in this field on a global scale is still rather complicated. By UN estimates, around 180 million people indulge in drug abuse today. The annual illicit traffic in narcotic drugs amounts to between 400-500 billion US dollars, or eight percent of total world trade. The global tendency for aggravation of the narco-situation in the early 1990 was really manifest in all the CIS states. Unfortunately, the scourge did not bypass Russia either. Over the last decade a spread of the epidemic of drug addiction has been noted in the country, posing a serious threat to the health of the population and national security as a whole, Deputy Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation Nikolai Solovyov declared on Tuesday.
The Russian Federation, he noted, has become an object of vigorous expansion by the international narco-business. Over half of the drugs revealed come to Russia from other countries. In the past year customs authorities confiscated about nine tons of narcotic drugs. More than 3,000 citizens from 34 states of the world were detained in Russia last year for the contraband of narcotics.
According to Solovyov, one of the substantial factors influencing the state of the Russian narco-market is the great length of insufficiently well-equipped southern boundaries of the state frontier and the marked increase in the scale of imports of heroin, above all, from Afghanistan through the territories of the states of the Central Asian region. The Security Council Deputy Secretary drew attention to the obvious and very dangerous interconnection of the narco-business with extremism and terrorism, when the proceeds from the sale of narcotics go on the financing of terrorist groups with the object of destabilizing the situation and fomenting religious conflicts.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is paying much attention to the problem of fighting the spread of drug addiction. By his decision, a special meeting of the Security Council of the Russian Federation is due to be held in the second half of September. It is planned that the meeting will determine measures to improve government policy in combating the illicit drug trafficking and the spread of drug addiction in the country, said Nikolai Solovyov.
The apparatus of the Security Council, he noted, is carrying out serious preparatory work for this meeting. Considerable statistical evidence has been accumulated, and a number of proposals generalized as to how to counter the illicit drug trafficking. With the direct participation of the workers of the apparatus of the Security Council there went preparations for the Second Conference on International Antidrug Cooperation, which on the initiative of the government of the Saratov Region will be held in the coming days in Saratov. The conference will be attended by delegations of CIS member states and the heads of a number of subjects of the Russian Federation and of the concerned Russian federal ministries and departments. On the President's instruction Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation Vladimir Rushailo will take part in the conference. A thorough exchange of views at this conference, Solovyov said, will undoubtedly help to prepare better for an upcoming meeting of the Security Council and to outline ways of closer coordination and cooperation in the fight against the spread of drug addiction.
___________________________________________________________
© Publication of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation.
|
RUSSIA IN FACTS