President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev: We have the CSTO summit coming up soon. Our colleagues and partners from the Collective Security Treaty Organisation will be arriving on Sunday. One of the areas for our work together is the fight against drug trafficking, of course.
I would like to hear about your contacts with our CSTO colleagues. What are the problems encountered today, given that drug trafficking continues to pose as great a challenge as ever and remains a common problem that we all face. Despite the action the anti-terrorism coalition is taking, the drug supply routes from Afghanistan are still up and running and this creates enormous problems for all of the neighbouring countries, including the Russian Federation.
So, tell me what is being done at the moment.
Director of the Federal Drug Control Service Viktor Ivanov: We think that cooperation within the CSTO is progressing well. The Channel operations, carried out on a regular basis, are a good example.
We carried out three such operations over the last year, and an increasing number of countries are starting to take part as observers. More than 20 countries took part in the last operation, carried out last autumn, including countries in Southeast Asia, Europe, North and South America.
This has helped us to step up work between the law enforcement agencies involved in one way or another in the fight against drug trafficking: the customs and border services, of course, the drug control services, and the police. This makes it possible to keep information on drug trafficking channels up to date and thus consolidate efforts to intercept drugs.
It could be a good idea to examine the possibility of using the Collective Rapid Reaction Force for one-off operations on the main drug trafficking routes.
Furthermore, we decided last autumn to hold the Channel operations on an ongoing basis. The heads of the drug control agencies met this year to organise the process – establish the required staff subdivisions, draw up the procedures for intergovernmental meetings, and set national drug trafficking prevention headquarters within the CSTO.
All of these measures have enabled us to step up our work not just while carrying out the operations themselves, but also during the periods between operations, in the areas of data collection, processing and analysis, and preparation of the activities required for carrying out the actual operations. We are also working now on the software for a common data base in order to make our drug interception efforts more effective.
Dmitry Medvedev: Good. This work needs to continue.
We are in the process now of setting up the CRRF. This kind of force should be able to also carry out missions to cut off drug supply channels as part of large-scale operations to block the supply routes and destroy the drug dealers’ infrastructure. I think we will discuss not only establishing the force, but will also discuss how we can use it in the fight against drugs.