MOSCOW: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Friday that militants from Afghanistan and Pakistan were training for attacks against Russia and former Soviet Central Asia and that they periodically cross into Central Asian territory. Terrorists, "with the participation of former Taliban and participants of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan," were training in Afghanistan and across the border in Pakistan with the aim of "conducting terrorist attacks, including on the territory of the Russian Federation," Lavrov claimed at a joint news conference with NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.
He said the militants had penetrated into the Fergana Valley, shared between the former Soviet republics of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, and he proposed that Russia and NATO work with those countries' special services "to ensure that such activity is stopped." |