MOSCOW. Sept 7 (Interfax-AVN) - Russia will set up 72 more border pickets in the North Caucasus by 2010, a senior border guard official said on Tuesday.
"Seventy-two border pickets will be established in North Caucasian regions before 2010, and 29 of them are already under construction on the Chechen, Dagestani, and Ingush sections of the border," Lieutenant General Alexander Manilov, deputy head of the Border Guard Service, told a news conference held in connection with the Interpolitex 2004 and IDELF 2004 exhibitions, which opened in Moscow on Tuesday.
The posts that are being built are being fitted with state of the art equipment. "I am primarily speaking about border guard assets, engineer systems, night-vision devices, and other special assets," Manilov said.
"Against the background of the tragedy in Beslan and other recent terrorist acts, it is obvious to everyone that we desperately need a new system of border guarding and its modern equipment," he said.
In addition to the new pickets, seven new border guard detachments will be established in the North Caucasus, Manilov went on.
"We are setting up two border training centers in the region, namely the Unified Training Center in Stavropol, where both active-duty and contracted service personnel will be trained, and the Naval Training Center in Anapa, where the personnel of naval border units will be trained," he said.