Russia and the European Union are working hard to develop a plan to tackle the Afghan drug trade, Russia's anti-narcotics chief Viktor Ivanov said on Monday.
At least 30,000 people die in Russia every year from heroin, 90% of it smuggled in from Afghanistan.
"A five-year plan to liquidate the Afghan drug threat is currently in development," Ivanov said at a news conference in Moscow.
He said a number of joint operations are also in development.
Russian and U.S. agents seized more than a ton of heroin and opium last year in a raid close to the border with Pakistan.
Ivanov had in the past blamed NATO for not doing enough to stamp out drug production in Afghanistan, which has increased almost tenfold since the U.S.-led invasion toppled the Taliban in 2001.
One of the main traffic routes for Afghan heroin and opium goes through Kyrgyzstan and into Russia where it is further distributed throughout Europe.
Law enforcement agencies loyal to ousted president Kurmanbek Bakiyev operated drug trafficking routes in southern Kyrgyzstan, where fighting between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbek communities last June killed more than 400 people, a top security official said.
Kyrgyzstan's new leadership is deeply concerned by the Afghan drug threat, Nikolai Bordyuzha, the head of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, said on Monday.
"A drug controls agency was reinstated in Kyrgyzstan after being abolished [in 2009]," he said. "Several drug caravans have been seized in the past few months."
MOSCOW, February 21 (RIA Novosti)
