TASHKENT, March 29 (RIA Novosti) - A regional security alliance of Russia, China and four ex-Soviet Central Asian nations can become a global player in the fight against terrorism, a senior Russian official said Wednesday.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization's anti-terror unit "is a highly efficient body, and has all it takes to reach a top level in international affairs," Sergei Smirnov, deputy head of the Federal Security Service (FSB), told a news conference in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent.
Speaking to reporters after a session of the unit's governing board, Smirnov said his agency was sponsoring the body to help it play a more prominent role in the global fight against terrorism and cooperate more proactively with other international organizations involved in counter-terrorism efforts.
Smirnov said the FSB and the National Security Service of Uzbekistan were cooperating at the bilateral level as well as within the SCO's anti-terror unit, which also includes Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan.
One of the aims of that cooperation is to prevent the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and other radical organizations from committing acts of terrorism in Central Asia, he said.
Smirnov said an FSB blacklist of individual terrorists and terror cells operating in the region would be unveiled at the unit's next board session in September.
Last fall, Russian and Uzbek troops held their first joint anti-terror exercises outside Tashkent, as part of an SCO-sponsored effort to contain the spread of Islamic radicalism across the region.
Uzbekistan's government said Islamic extremists were behind an uprising in the region's most populous country in May. The security forces' violent crackdown drew harsh criticism from Western governments and human rights organizations, who accused the Uzbek leadership of killing hundreds of innocent civilians.
