"The threat of terrorism is formidable, and our common achievements have so far been too small to provide an adequate response to this terrible problem. This is why there is still plenty of room for deepening and expanding our cooperation with the U.S. in this area, said Andrei Kokoshin, chairman of the Russian State Duma (parliament's lower house) Committee for CIS Affairs and Russian Diaspora Relations.
"I firmly believe that unless there is adequate Russian-U.S. interaction, the global community as a whole will not be able to cooperate effectively," he said. "There is ample evidence that terrorists in various countries are trying to obtain weapons of mass destruction. Preventing this must be a constant concern for international cooperation, particularly between Russia and the United States."
Kokoshin said that the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), which includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan, proposed to develop cooperation with NATO on the fight against terrorism, but proposals still did not receive the necessary support in the West.
"Joint efforts by the U.S. and Russia, NATO and the CSTO are of paramount importance to deal with the situation in Afghanistan, which has again become a cause of growing concern for Russia and fellow CSTO members. I think that we in Russia and our CSTO partners have a better understanding of developments in that region than our Western partners in the international anti-terror coalition," Kokoshin said.
