From: Justin Burke (JBurke@sorosny.org)
Date: Fri Oct 27 2000 - 09:57:37 EDT
Tajik president calls for single CIS policy on Afghanistan
Tajik President Emomali Rahmonov told the CIS defence ministers' meeting in
Dushanbe on Thursday that because so many countries in the region felt
concerned about the upsurge in fighting in northern Afghanistan, the CIS
states must channel their security policy in the region into one single
approach.
Rahmonov, in comments broadcast by Tajik radio, urged the CIS states to
take urgent steps to strengthen their southern borders.
"Today's meeting is being held amid an absence of calm along the southern
borders of the CIS. And a clear tendency can be seen of religious extremist
forces stepping up their activity, and not givening up their plans to
continue their terrorist activities aimed at destabilizing the situation,
not only in Central Asia," Rahmonov said.
"The military and political situation in the region continues to remain
complicated and it requires that we interact, take decisive and
well-founded measures to prevent the threat to the security of our
countries and to draw up a single approach towards assessing the
situation."
Stressing the need for CI countries to cooperate more on security, he added:
"The further development of the situation around our countries, especially
in Afghanistan, requires that we, the CIS member countries, step up
interaction.
"We must take urgent measures to strengthen the (?external borders) of the
Commonwealth, especially the borders with Afghanistan, and also begin
drawing up an operational plan for using the grouping of the armed forces
of the Collective Security Treaty member-countries (?sometime) in the near
future in the event that there is a threat of direct aggression to the
region," he said.
Rahmonov also welcomed the efforts by Russia and the USA to resolve the
Afghan issue.
"It is heartening that finally the two great powers have closely engaged in
settling the situation in Afghanistan, realizing that the situation in this
country still poses a threat both to Central Asia and to international
security as a whole," Rahmonov said.
Source: Tajik Radio first programme, Dushanbe, in Uzbek 1200 gmt 26 Oct 00
BBC Mon CAU 261000/** tm/va/mi
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