RUSSIA PULLS OUT FROM "POROUS" TAJIK-AFGHAN BORDER

Russia is withdrawing its frontier troops from the Tajik-Afghan border
in a move that will leave a porous border for drug traffickers, a
Russian official said in an interview with Nezavisimaya Gazeta Wednesday.

"We are pulling out of Tajikistan in general," First Deputy Foreign
Minister Vyacheslav Trubnikov told Nezavisimaya Gazeta. "The result
will be a porous border. Porous means drugs."

Russian-led troops have helped to maintain stability in Tajikistan
since a 1992-97 civil war. They monitor over 90 percent of the remote
1,344km (840-mile) Tajik border with Afghanistan, the world's top
opium producer.

The Russians are leaving at the request of Tajikistan, Trubnikov told
the newspaper, although Tajik President Imomali Rakhmonov said two
weeks ago the handover was a Russian initiative, Reuters reported.

Russia's Defense Ministry declined to say how many troops it has in
Tajikistan in a statement to Reuters. According to Reuters, analysts
put the total - including a motorized rifle division sent for
peacekeeping - at over 20,000.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates this year's harvest of
Afghan opium, much of which turns up as heroin on city streets in the
West, at 5,400 tonnes, Reuters reported.

Instead of policing the Tajik frontier, Russia will create security
zones on its own border with Kazakhstan, the biggest of the five
ex-Soviet Central Asian states clustered between Russia and the Muslim
states of Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

"The Americans are not happy with this," Nezavisimaya Gazeta quoted
Trubnikov as saying. "They know that things get past us at the moment,
so the drugs traffic will spread further."