17 October 2004	Sunday	02 Ramazan 1425

DUSHANBE, Oct 16: Tajikistan on Saturday formally granted Russian forces in the Central Asian state a permanent military base in a move Russian President Vladimir Putin hailed as a guarantee of regional security.

With some 7,000 soldiers, Moscow said the 201 Divisions's headquarters in Tajikistan would be Russia's largest military base on foreign soil.

"Our military presence in Tajikistan will not only guarantee our investment but will also guarantee stability in the region," Putin said after talks with Tajik President Imomali Rakhmonov.

At a joint news conference, Putin also announced deals to invest $2 billion in the former Soviet state.

Russian forces were a stabilising factor in Tajikistan's 1992-97 civil war and a buffer against Taleban-run Afghanistan.

But in past years Tajik officials openly said they wanted the Russians out to let Dushanbe, like other Central Asian neighbours, build on cooperation with the United States begun during the 2001 anti-Taleban military campaign in Afghanistan.

Tajikistan had dragged its feet on a 1999 pact granting the division a formal base, but promises of big investment and debt relief by Moscow changed that.

Criticised by nationalists for failing to defend its interests and presence in Central Asia, Russia has of late been keen to match the growth of U.S. influence in the area.

Last October, it opened a base in Central Asian Kyrgyzstan where NATO established itself during the Afghan war.

Tajikistan also on Saturday formally confirmed Russia's ownership of a space control centre at Nurek, which was built in 1980 for the Soviet space programme.

Between the 201 Division and its border guards in Tajikistan, Russia has some 20,000 troops in the country.

Rakhmonov and Putin reiterated an earlier agreement to relocate the guards, who hold 90 percent of the Tajik-Afghan border, from Tajikistan by 2006.

That could weaken control over trafficking from Afghanistan, believed to account for 90 percent of drugs used in Europe.

But the head of Russia's drugs control agency Viktor Cherkesov, said Moscow would work hard to counter that. "Our possibilities of discovering the channels of heroin trafficking from Afghanistan to the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States), to Russia, have seriously increased," he said. -Reuters