The Hindu : Terror threat comes from Afghanistan, not Iraq

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Dec 12, 2002

International

International

Terror threat comes from Afghanistan, not Iraq

By Vladimir Radyuhin

MOSCOW DEC. 11. Afghanistan still poses a terrorist threat to Central Asia, a senior Russian security official warned. The Russian Security Council chief, Vladimir Rushailo, was quoted by the Itar-Tass news agency as saying that fragmented terrorist groups from Afghanistan could invade Central Asian states.

He was speaking in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, at the end of a two-day meeting of security officials from former Soviet republics that are members of the Collective Security Treaty (CST).

The CST member-states will step up anti-terrorist interaction, Mr. Rushailo said. He described a planned Russian airbase in Kyrgyzstan as a "strong deterrrent'' against terrorist attacks.

Russia began deploying warplanes at Kant airfield near Bishkek a week ago.

The airbase, to comprise about 20 fighter jets and support aircraft, will be part of a Rapid Reaction Force for Central Asia set up last year by the six CST member-states, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Belarus and Armenia. The Russian President, Vladimir Putin, visited Bishkek on the last leg of his tour of China and India a week ago, to emphasise Moscow's concerns over the security situation in Afghanistan and Central Asia.

Russia is focussing attention on unabating terrorist threat from Afghanistan in a clear challenge to the United States as it raises the heat over Iraq. On Monday the Russian Defence Minister, Sergei Ivanov, told the visiting NATO Secretary-General, George Robertson, that Iraq was a non-proliferation, not a terrorism problem.

Moscow is telling Washington that instead of targeting Iraq it should concentrate on the unfinished task of combating terrorism in Afghanistan. A Russian Deputy Foreign Minister said recently that the security situation was deteriorating in Afghanistan and the Taliban could yet stage a comeback. Russia has expressed its profound concern that drug trafficking from Afghanistan has dramatically increased after the U.S.-led military campaign against the Taliban, emerging as a major source of funding for terrorists.

``We have given the Americans detailed maps of canabis plantations in Afghanistan, but they have done nothing to destroy them,'' a Russia drug control officer complained in a TV programme last week. Russia's message to the U.S is that by shifting the thrust of its anti-terror campaign to Iraq Washington is behaving like a man who is looking for a lost purse, not where he had dropped it, but under a street lamp, because he could see better there.

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