Ditched Russia-U.S. drug control deal was obsolete - lawmakers
MOSCOW. Jan 30 (Interfax) - Russia no longer needs foreign help in fighting drug trafficking and other forms of crime, a top Russian lawmaker said on Wednesday in commenting on the country's scrapping a 2002 law enforcement agreement with the United States.
"Russia has sufficient potential, including financial, today to completely give up foreign assistance, including in combating crime and drug trafficking," Federation Council First Deputy Chairman Alexander Torshin told Interfax.
"It was a completely different time in 2002, when that agreement was signed, and today we can thank the Americans for giving us a helping hand then - it is partly owing to that assistance that we have been able to get our own mechanisms going and apply a lot of methodologies," he said.
"Now we can do it by ourselves, but that by no means implies that our cooperation in that sphere will come to an end completely," Torshin said.
Russia has built up so much experience in fighting drug trafficking that the country can share it with the United States, he argued. "Moreover, we are happy to share our experience in countering other threats, and to share our resources as well. When the United States needed help with Afghanistan, we did provide such help, and we continue to do so."
"Possibly, very soon, new fundamental agreements will be signed, including agreements on action against drug trafficking," Torshin said.
The chairman of the Federation Council's Defense and Security Committee, Viktor Ozerov, argued that other Russian-American agreements might be ditched in a while as well for what he claimed were purely pragmatic and by no means political reasons.
"A revision of bilateral agreements may also result in the termination of other documents that have exhausted their resources and fail to be up to modern realities," he told Interfax.
"The termination of various bilateral agreements between states shouldn't be seen as a political move, it's a natural process in an environment that is marked by rapid changes," he said. "Some agreements would get terminated and replaced by others, but that would have no effect on strategic cooperation between Moscow and Washington."
He concurred with Torshin's point that the 2002 law enforcement accord is out of date. "At that time, the situation was essentially different, and we did need assistance from the Americans in dealing with those problems," he said.
Today Russia should have more recourse to the anti-drug trafficking resources of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, other Commonwealth of Independent States bodies and its bilateral relations with Central Asian republics, he argued.
"These forms of cooperation are proving effective, and every year dozens of tonnes of drugs get seized and destroyed. Russia's bilateral cooperation with Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan in this sphere is also proving to be very effective. Owing to this cooperation, the total amount of drugs that were intercepted has grown by double-digit factors in recent years," he said.
