Dow Jones: Argentina, Russia Looking To Cooperate On Nuclear Technology

RIA: Russia, U.S. to discuss anti-drug efforts at Moscow meeting

The Russian-U.S. Drug Trafficking Working Group will hold its first session on Thursday in Moscow, Russia's Federal Drug Control Service said.

The co-chairmen of the group are Gil Kerlikowske, Director of U.S. National Drug Control Policy and his Russian counterpart, the head of the Federal Drug Control Service, Viktor Ivanov. The two officials have already met in Washington in September 2009.

Kerlikowske earlier told RIA Novosti that situation in the world's largest heroin producer, Afghanistan, will be one of key issues on the meeting's agenda.

Russia is one of the main markets for drugs from Afghanistan, with at least 12 tons of pure heroin smuggled into the country each year.

Drug use is a growing problem in the country, particularly involving heroin smuggled via the former Soviet states in Central Asia, including Tajikistan and Kazakhstan. About 90% of drug users in Russia are heroin addicts.

In late January Russia's envoy to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, urged NATO to prioritize the fight against drug trafficking in Afghanistan, saying that "heroin aggression" was "the main threat to Russia."

The working group operates within the framework of the Russia-U.S. Bilateral Presidential Commission, established by the Russian and U.S. leaders during their meeting in last July.

MOSCOW, February 4 (RIA Novosti)

Russia Today: America’s “honest disagreement” with Russia over Afghan drugs

04 February, 2010, 10:13

While the US intensifies its crackdown on Islamist militants in Afghanistan, the country's government is considering peace talks with the Taliban.

President Hamid Karzai wants the international community to help him reconcile with insurgents by offering them money and jobs.

However, investigative journalist Gareth Porter says Washington is still uncertain about supporting the project.

“The Obama administration really wants to have no negotiations with Taliban for quite a while – by that I mean at least mid-2011, when the period of the troops surge in Afghanistan has run its course and supposedly some troops withdrawal is taking place.”

Porter calls this stance “a strategic mistake” because later it could be more difficult to seal a deal with the Taliban.

While the Afghan president envisages negotiations with the militants, Moscow believes that an efficient fight against the Taliban and terrorism in the world without tackling drug producing and trafficking is impossible.

Deputy Head of Russia’s Federal Service for Control of Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Circulation Vladimir Kalanda told Ekho Moskvy radio station on Wednesday that the drug problem is closely related to acts of terror in Afghanistan and other countries:

Washington, however, is of the opposite opinion on the issue.

On Tuesday, speaking to journalists, US Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke said the United States has an “honest disagreement” with Russia over eradicating poppy fields in Afghanistan.

“The Russian government thinks that poppy eradication is the key; we think it was creating opportunities for the Taliban to recruit farmers,” he said.

Instead, Washington wants to put greater emphasis on interdiction and destroying drug bazaars.

Thursday, 04 Feb, 2010

President Barack Obama after taking office last year made a major policy shift by ending a military drive to destroy poppies, believing it alienated Afghanistan's poorest who only grew the crop to make money, reports AFP.

“We had an honest disagreement about poppy eradication,” Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, told a news conference.

“The Russian government thinks that poppy eradication is the key; we think it was creating opportunities for the Taliban to recruit farmers,” he said.

Holbrooke said the new emphasis on interdiction and destroying drug bazaars instead of crops was yielding “much greater success.”

“We have done more damage to the drugs by this policy and we're no longer giving the Taliban a free recruiting tool,” he said.

But he denied that the disagreement was impeding Russian involvement in Afghanistan, saying that Moscow and Washington were pursuing “a wide range of areas of cooperation.”R

Russia's ambassador to Nato, Dmitry Rogozin, told AFP last month that Moscow had complained to the alliance about its attitude to fighting opium production, insisting it should be a higher priority.

“Thirty-thousand young Russians died last year because of their consumption of heroin produced in Afghanistan. That's twice the number of Soviet troops who were killed in Afghanistan in a decade,” Rogozin said.

In 2009 the potential gross export value of opium from Afghanistan was 2.8 billion dollars, or about a quarter of the country's gross domestic product, according to the UN drugs agency.

103-03-02-2010

On the same day, in a ceremony at the Russian Embassy in Berlin, Sergey Lavrov will present Jubilee Medals of 65 Years of Victory and Russian MFA Badges ‘For Contribution to International Cooperation’ to a group of German anti-fascist veterans who fought in the Red Army ranks during the Great Patriotic War.

The main highlight of the program in Munich on February 6 will be Lavrov’s speech at the 46th Munich Conference on Security Policy. During a plenary session on the theme of “The Future of European and Global Security,” in which the Minister will take part, discussion will be focused on the Russian initiative for a European Security Treaty. His contacts with a number of foreign partners are likely on the sidelines of the Forum.

In addition, the Minister plans to visit Russian bobsleigher Irina Skvortsova on treatment in Munich, who was seriously injured during competitions in Bavaria on November 23, 2009.

The Ministers will examine important issues on the extensive cooperation agenda for Russia and Germany in the international arena, with the main emphasis to be laid on the task of strengthening and renewing the security architecture in the Euro-Atlantic space in the context of promoting the Russian-proposed Draft European Security Treaty. They will also exchange views on wide-ranging issues related to the Russia-EU and Russia-NATO Council dialogue.

In reviewing the situation of disarmament and arms control, the parties are expected to talk about reducing offensive nuclear arms, restoring the CFE regime and streamlining the system of transparency and confidence-building measures in the military sphere.

Naturally, the focus of reciprocal attention will be WMD nonproliferation, including a political and diplomatic settlement to the Iran nuclear problem; advancing the Middle East peace process; assistance to stabilization and reconstruction in Afghanistan, and improvement of the situation in other hot spots and areas with high crisis potential.

An important subject for discussion will also be giving Russia-EU cooperation the “partnership for modernization” quality, which is already being quite successfully effected in the Russian-German format. The essence of this strategy is to launch and implement forward-looking ambitious projects in trade, economic, scientific, technological, cultural and humanitarian fields, including civil society dialogue, in development of the goals set forth in the Four Road Maps for Russia-EU interaction.

February 3, 2010

The leaders of the informal group first met under the BRIC banner in June 2009 in Yekaterinburg, Russia. During those talks, they expressed reservations over the US dollar remaining the world's de facto reserve currency.

The Estado de Sao Paulo newspaper reported that Chinese President Hu Jintao would likely continue to Brazil from the BRIC meeting for an official visit.

The BRIC summit in Brasilia is to be preceded on April 15 by a meeting between the leaders of Brazil, India and South Africa called to boost political and trade ties, a foreign ministry official said.