DUSHANBE. July 1 (Interfax-AVN) - The Tajik and Russian border guard agencies have drafted an agreement on continuing their cooperation and the conditions under which Russian border guards will hand over the protection of the Tajik-Afghan border to their Tajik counterparts.
"An agreement on these matters is to be signed in Tbilisi on July 6 when CIS heads from the border guards' services will hold a conference," an official in the Tajik Border Protection Committee told Interfax on Tuesday.
Tajik border guards will take over the patrolling of the Pamir stretch of the border with Afghanistan before the end of August, he said. The stretch patrolled by the Russian Moskovsky border guard unit will be transferred in 2005, while the area patrolled by the Pyandzh unit will be handed over in 2006, the official said.
The Russian border guard service will be represented in Tajikistan by an operating group stationed in Dushanbe.