Dream team? Russia proposes joint anti-drug efforts in Afghanistan

Published: 05 April, 2012, 15:33

With the Alliance’s war on opium in Afghanistan suffering setbacks, the director of Russia’s Drug Control Service has said the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and NATO could cooperate in battling drug trafficking in the Central Asian hotspot.

­A special anti-drug agency is being created within the SCO to coordinate the member-countries' fight against drug-trafficking, Viktor Ivanov said at a press conference in Moscow on Thursday.

Ivanov sees the new agency as a means not only for combating heroin use in Russia and beyond, but as a means for creating a “reset” between the two regional organizations.

"When this agency has been formed the SCO will become a lot more effective,” he said. “It will turn this organization into a key regional anti-drug structure and create a unique opportunity to reset relations between the SCO and NATO."

FULL STORY: http://rt.com/politics/russia-nato-cso-us-afghanistan-heroin-331/