DUSHANBE, February 2, Asia-Plus  -- By end of February five patrol boats will have run along the Tajik-Afghan border on the River Panj between Hamadoni and Panj districts.   

Director of Tajikistan ’s Drug Control Agency (DCA), Rustam Nazarov, remarked this at a briefing in Moscow on January 31.  This news conference hosted by RIA Novosti was attended by more than 30 Russian and foreign journalists.  The Tajik Embassy in Moscow and the RIA Novosti Press Club had organized this news conference.  

Muhammad Egamzod, press secretary of the Tajik Embassy in Moscow , has told Asia-Plus that the Tajik drug control chief speaking to journalists noted that Tajik authorities had increased numbers of Tajik border troops and now more than 10,000 border guards patrolled Tajikistan ’s national border.    

“It is impossible to provide equally strict control along the entire length of the border,” said Rustam Nazarov, “Besides the usual patrolling, border guards also use mobile groups.”  He noted that the Russian operational group staying in Tajikistan under the bilateral agreements signed in October 2004 performing advisory functions is providing assistance to Tajik border guards in the effective border patrolling and training of the young generation of border guards.