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Russia, US anti-terrorism cooperation in deep freeze

Director of the department for tackling new challenges and threats in the Russian Foreign Ministry Ilya Rogachev says the level of mutual trust should be higher

MOSCOW, April 24. /ITAR-TASS/. Anti-terrorism cooperation between Russia and the United States is in “a deep freeze,” director of the department for tackling new challenges and threats in the Russian Foreign Ministry Ilya Rogachev told ITAR-TASS on Thursday.

“You know that the United States have made claims without any link to the current Ukrainian situation that we had allegedly informed them badly about a threat that is coming from the Tsarnaevs. This is absolutely unacceptable,” Rogachev said.

“Therefore, in this atmosphere it is difficult to cooperate where interaction between law enforcement agencies and security services is needed,” he noted, adding that “the level of mutual trust should be higher, maybe even in other spheres.”

As for anti-drug cooperation with Washington, the diplomat also noted that ties in this sphere are also frozen. “A lot depends on Afghanistan and “2014 factor” (the year when the international coalition forces will be withdrawn from Afghanistan),” the Foreign Ministry’s department director noted. “The US actually shirk all their responsibility in the fight against drugs as they did not assume much responsibility on them in the country. We have consistently pointed to this for all these 13 years of their stay in Afghanistan,” he said.“But now they just said, 'This is not our business, we go away and you - Afghans and their neighbors - do what you want'.”

In reply to a question about the current situation in Syria, Rogachev noted that Washington still accuses incumbent country’s President Bashar Assad of everything. “We cannot turn a blind eye at the presence of terrorists linked with Al-Qaeda there,” the diplomat said.