MOSCOW. Oct 22 (Interfax-AVN) - In 2008 Russia will assign about 11 million rubles to help Afghanistan and Central Asian countries resist drug trafficking, First Deputy Interior Minister Alexander Chekalin has said.
"We have done a lot of work helping Afghanistan and Central Asian states combat drug trafficking. This year 5 million rubles was assigned for that purpose, and in 2008 the figure will rise to almost 11 million rubles," Chekalin said at a Monday session of the coordinating council of the Russia-NATO Council project of training law enforcers from Central Asia and Afghanistan to combat the spread of drugs.
NATO is in charge of funding the project, he added.
The Russian Interior Ministry will be increasing its cooperation with NATO countries in fighting drug trafficking in Afghanistan and Central Asia, Chekalin said.
"The significant internationalization of this criminal business." was a specific feature of the current state of the drug trafficking, he said.
Fighting the spread of drugs is one of the priorities of the Interior Ministry, Chekalin said.
There will be a graduation ceremony at a Russian Interior Ministry training center in Domodedovo outside Moscow, for the seventh group of law enforcement officers from Afghanistan and Central Asia trained in methods of combating drug trafficking as part of the framework of the Russia-NATO project launched in 2005.