NOVO-OGARYOVO, June 3 (RIA Novosti) - The relations with Tajikistan were a priority direction of Russia's work both in Central Asia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) as a whole, President Putin said in his country residence while instructing a new Russian ambassador to that country. "Tajikistan is our priority partner owing to many circumstances, Vladimir Putin told 59-year-old Ramazan Abdulatipov appointed as the new ambassador to Tajikistan, adding that bilateral military and technical co-operation was an important direction of that work.
Therefore, the Russia-Tajikistan interaction requires an extremely delicate, intelligent and weighed diplomatic approach aimed at the comprehensive development of relations at the bilateral level and within the framework of joint work, the President said.
According to Vladimir Putin, joint work involved co-operation within such structures as the CIS, the Eurasian Economic Community (EURAsEC: Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan) and other international institutions.
"I very much hope that the Russian embassy will join very actively this work under your leadership," the President told the new ambassador.
Tajikistan is the place where the Russian military base both exists and continues to develop on the basis of the Russian 201st motor rifle division located in Dushanbe, the President said.
Putin also considers it necessary to help Tajikistan in strengthening the state border between Tajikistan and Afghanistan.
"We need to help our Tajik friends to strengthen the state border. In the first place, it is Russia that is interested in that, the President said.
"Now we are at the stage of transferring the state border between Tajikistan and Afghanistan to our Tajik partners (under the Russian-Tajik inter-governmental agreement, the function of protecting the entire Tajik-Afghan border will be entirely transferred to Tajik border guards).
"It is a well known fact that a considerable amount of narcotic drugs continues to cross the Afghan-Tajik border to go to Western Europe and the Russian Federation," Putin said.
Russia and Tajikistan had some agreements in border protection while their economic accords involving the participation of the state and the private sector amounted to billions of US dollars.
The President further said that bilateral economic co-operation would focus on energy, metallurgy, agriculture and some industrial branches.
Avarian by nationality and a resident of Daghestan, Ramazan Abdulatipov was until recently chairman of the Council of the Assembly of Russia's Peoples public organization. He previously held the position of the chairman of the RSFSR Supreme Council Chamber of Nationalities (1990-1993), deputy chairman of the Federation Council (1993-1995), State Duma deputy (1995-1997) and deputy chairman of the Russian government (1997-1998).
In March 2005 Abdulatipov was appointed ambassador to Turkmenistan; however, President of Turkmenistan Saparmurat Niyazov did not give his approval and requested Russia to appoint a professional diplomat instead of Abdulatipov.
