General David Petraeus, the commander of US forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, flew into Tajikistan Monday for top-level talks with the government in Dushanbe, US and Tajik officials said. Petraeus, whose visit comes as US President Barack Obama weighs sending more troops to Afghanistan, is due to meet with Tajikistan's President Emomali Rakhmon, a spokeswoman from the US embassy in Dushanbe told AFP.
"He's meeting with the president and some Tajik military officials and they will be talking about joint co-operation in promoting stability in Afghanistan," she said. "They are going to be talking about combating drug trafficking, preventing terrorism and... border security," she added.
Tajikistan, which shares a porous 1,340-kilometre (830-mile) border with war-ravaged Afghanistan, agreed a deal with Washington in February for the transit of non-lethal US supplies for troops in Afghanistan. The spokeswoman said Petraeus would be discussing issues related to the transit deal.
Security is increasingly a concern for Tajikistan, the poorest ex-Soviet state, and four gunmen from a Taliban-linked militant group were killed near the country's northern border with Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan last week. Dushanbe sent troops into the volatile Rasht Valley region near the border with Afghanistan earlier this year amid reports that militants were using Tajik territory to cross from Afghanistan into the heart of Central Asia.
Islamist groups were largely pushed out of Tajikistan after the end of the country's 1990s civil war, in which tens of thousands of people died. Washington won deals with several ex-Soviet states in Central Asia to host supply routes earlier this year, as attacks have mounted on a supply route from Pakistan.
Comments
Comments are closed.