ITAR-TASS News Agency
TASS
September 30, 2005 Friday

CIS Interior exercise to be held in Tajikistan in 2006-minister

By Svetlana Alikina, Tigran Liloyan

YEREVAN

The Interior Ministries of the Commonwealth of Independent States
(CIS) member countries are planning to conduct a joint antiterrorist
exercise in Tajikistan in 2006, Russian Interior Minister Rashid
Nurgaliyev told reporters on Friday after a meeting of the CIS
Council of Interior Ministers held in the Armenian capital.

“It is planned that special forces of several countries will take
part in the exercise,” Nurgaliyev said adding that the details will
be coordinated later. The Russian Interior chief specified that the
Russian Interior Ministry has already held a joint antiterrorist
exercise with the Belarussian colleagues in Smolensk in September
this year. “We will hold a similar exercise with the Armenian
Interior Ministry in Krasnodar on October 10,” the minister said.

Nurgaliyev said the meeting participants discussed the progress of
the implementation of the Joint Plan to counteract terrorism for
2005. The minister pointed out the Russian Interior Ministry has
conducted on information obtained from CIS countries a complex of
search operations for persons placed on the international wanted list
for crimes related to terrorism.

“So we have six facts of fruitful joint work. In all the cases our
work was most pre-emptive and prompt,” the Russian interior minister
said. He cited as an example the detention in Azerbaijan this March
of members of the Islamic Jamaat operating in the territory of
Tatarstan. Moreover, two persons wanted for terrorist attacks they
staged in Tajikistan in the period from 1998 to 2001 were detained in
Yakutia and St. Petersburg in June 2005.

Nurgaliyev also said the Russian Interior Ministry is participating
in drawing up of the list of organisations engaged in terrorist and
extremist activities. According to him, the ministry “has put forward
a proposal to recognise the international organisation Tabligi Jamaat
a terrorist group and ban its activity in the territory of the
Commonwealth member states.”

Nurgaliyev highly assessed the work of the CIS Council of Interior
Ministers pointing out that it is “one of the most efficient
executive bodies of the CIS.” According to the Russian Interior
chief, “It is gratifying that our cooperation is becoming more and
more practical and together we are in actual practice fulfilling
common tasks to ensure security, law and order.”