MOSCOW. June 9 (Interfax) - Cooperation with the NATO-led security mission in Afghanistan must be linked to the fight against illegal drugs production in the militancy-plagued country, Russia's NATO envoy Dmitry Rogozin said.
"Further assistance to the International Security Assistance Force, or NATO, must be linked to a more effective and more active position in countering the drug threat coming from Afghanistan," Rogozin told journalists on Tuesday in answer to a question from Interfax.
But this issue should not be tied to transit services across Russia for the countries of the international coalition forces in that country, he said.
"I don't think the transit arrangement should be revised. We ourselves have a stake in it," the Russian diplomat said.
Rogozin urged the United States and NATO to put more effort into uprooting the Afghan drug threat.
"We cannot put up with the situation, when our American colleagues are actively destroying cocaine plantations outside its territory, in Latin America, and argue that this method won't work in Afghanistan," he said.
The coalition forces' uninterrupted work in Afghanistan is in Moscow's interests. We don't oppose anything out of spite," he said.
"Our losses, caused by Afghan heroin, are twice as large as the losses the Soviet Union suffered in Afghanistan in ten years. It is a war, which is being waged against us and which must be countered," Rogozin said.
Cooperation between NATO and the Collective Security Treaty Organization in combating Afghan drugs must be strengthened and the border regime must be tightened, he said.