DUSHANBE -- Russian border guards during the year 2000 confiscated more than three tons of narcotics from people who tried to smuggle them into Tajikistan from neighboring Afghanistan.

Heroin accounted for one quarter of the confiscated drugs, commander of the federal border guard service in Tajikistan Alexander Markin told journalists on Friday. He said that drug business is now one of the sources used to finance the so-called Taleban movement.

Markin stressed that the quantity of narcotics seized in the course of the past five years was record high. UN said more than 3,000 tons of narcotics were produced in Afghanistan last year and a powerful infrastructure for producing and smuggling narcotics was set up on the territories that are now controlled by the Taleban.

In the course of armed clashes with drug smugglers, Russian border guards were able to seize particularly large lots of heroin on the part of the border guarded by the Moskovsky detachment: 154 kilograms in July, more than one ton in August, and 182 kilograms in mid-December.

Markin believes that the inflow of drugs over the Tajik-Afghan border will not decrease this year.

(IRNA)