"We have no claims to make on each other, and there are no unsettled issues between us," the President stressed to newsmen after he voted at his polling station in Dushanbe, Tajik capital.
"Russian border guards are pulling out from the Tajik-Afghan frontier, but advisers will stay on in every Tajik frontier unit.
"Tajikistan is hosting Russia's biggest overseas military base. We are stepping up partnership not only in economic matters but on the anti-terror cause and in efforts against drug trafficking."
Russian personnel training assistance to Tajikistan started many years ago. Now, too, there are six hundred Tajik students in Russian colleges, universities and vocational schools, the President went on to say.
"The success of today's parliamentary election depends on the nation's goodwill, on what political party it prefers. Nothing matters more to Tajikistan than peace and stability," said Mr. Rakhmonov in a reference to bitter civil warfare through which the country came in the mid-1990s.
When asked whether he would run in the nearest presidential election, due next year, the President said, evasively: "We all must come to that day in one piece-we'll see later."
"I established the Popular Democratic Party all on my own, in 1994, and I shall be working on as its leader. I am young and dynamic enough still, and I am not going to leave active politics," he rounded off his address.
Tajikistan is electing its parliament's lower house today.
There are more than ten thousand Russian border guards stationed in Tajikistan for now to safeguard the Tajik-Afghan frontier on a Russian-Tajik agreement of 1993. The contingent will drastically cut within this year. The task of guarding the frontier is to gradually pass into Tajik hands. Tajikistan hasbeen saying so at varying levels, and on many occasions, since September last. The Khorog, Ishkashim and Kalai-Khumb units will be the first to shift into Tajikistan's Frontier Guard Committee's subordination. It overtook the Murgab stretch, 511 kilometers long, of the Tajik-Chinese frontier, two years ago. Russian soldiers will stay, for some more time, only along the most problem-laden stretches, presently guarded by the Moscow and Pyandzh units. The situation there is really dramatic-drug trafficking across the frontier river Pyandzh is skyrocketing with every passing year.
Meanwhile, as certain media outlets have reported, the first Russian soldiers are to withdraw from the Tajik-Afghan frontier even tomorrow, with July 1, 2006, as deadline for a final pullout.
