MOSCOW. April 25 (Interfax-AVN) - Russian and French assessments of contemporary threats to security are pretty close.
"This was announced at the Friday meeting in the State Duma lower house of Russian parliament involving Andrei Nikolayev, chairman of the Duma's defense committee, and French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie," the committee's press secretary Vitaly Strugovets told Interfax-Military News Agency.
He said that the officials pointed to three main threats to security such as regional crises, terrorism and WMD spread.
Analyzing the situation at the Balkans the officials unanimously said the situation in Kosovo was complicated.
According to them, drug-smuggling, arms trade and brigandage are flourishing in Kosovo.
As much as 30% of drugs come to Europe from Kosovo, and armament that is recently in use among French criminals has its origin in Kosovo, the parties said.
According to Alliot-Marie, "military forces in the region must be replaced with special police forces." "They must be capable of acting as military forces if the situation gets tense," she noted.
The EU will replace NATO in 2004 as the head of the peacekeeping operation in Bosnia.
The situation in Afghanistan is also far from stable and tensions are likely to rise there, Nikolayev and Alliot-Marie said.
"The global community should provide serious assistance to Afghanistan's neighbors, in particular, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, in the sphere of border accommodation," Alliot-Marie stressed.
According to Nikolayev, the accommodation of borders with Afghanistan will demand USD40bn and 8-10 years of work.
The two officials called for returning to the interaction system in the UN framework.
Only international law guarantees stability worldwide, Alliot-Marie said.
Speaking on the issue, Nikolayev proposed establishment of an expert team comprising chiefs of Russian, French and German parliamentary committees on international affairs, defense and security in order to discuss relevant security issues.
"In the future the group's activities might be extended to cover member nations of NATO and the EU," Nikolayev added.