Putin Slams NATO-Led Forces On Afghan Drug Trade

[CVX]

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday accused foreign forces in Afghanistan of letting the drugs trade run out of control -- one week after the United States itself rebuked Afghanistan for the booming business.

"They're doing almost nothing, not even just to reduce the drugs problem," Interfax news agency quoted Putin as telling Viktor Cherkesov, head of Russia's drugs control agency.

With no troops in Afghanistan, Russia tries to stem the flow of illegal drugs by catching traffickers as they leave Afghanistan and enter ex-Soviet Tajikistan across a border almost entirely policed by Russian border guards.

International peacekeepers, now under NATO leadership, have been in Afghanistan since the U.S.-led invasion of late 2001.

But critics have said the peacekeeping mission is too small -- covering little of the country outside Kabul -- and the U.S. government has further undermined it by starting a costly war in Iraq before securing peace in Afghanistan.

"They should get more involved and not just watch as caravans roam all over Afghanistan, then through the (former Soviet Union) to the West," Putin said.

Tajikistan will take the mountainous border under its full control by 2006 despite fears that after being ravaged by a 1992-97 civil war it can't afford the necessary equipment.

Last month Russian troops seized one tonne of Afghan heroin. But the United Nations says many times that amount hit Europe's streets last year -- 90 percent from Afghanistan.

Putin said the states involved in Afghanistan were blind to the real issue.

"They should understand the threat posed by Afghan drugs and not try to hide it from the public," he said, calling for far greater international cooperation.

U.S. President George W. Bush, campaigning for reelection, touts democratic changes in Afghanistan as a sign of progress in the war on terrorism, and told a rally last week that Afghans -- also preparing for a presidential election -- were "now free".

But a White House report published the same day put the onus for dealing with drugs on the Afghan government itself.

[capt_buzzard]

I hope that President G.W. Bush cleans up the drugs trade on the cities and towns of America.