INTERPOL officials from the CIS region meet to promote information exchange between countries.

The two-day meeting in Minsk, Belarus, which brings together more than 30 senior law enforcement officials from INTERPOL NCBs in the CIS countries, will also address how to promote information exchange between national law enforcement authorities regionally and internationally to better combat all forms of crime including terrorism, drugs trafficking and human trafficking.

The meeting will provide a forum for inter-agency briefings on anti-terrorism initiatives in the region including INTERPOL’s Fusion Task Force Project Kalkan, which facilitates information exchange on major terrorist groups among member countries in the Central Asian region, including Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Delegates will be also updated on the co-operation agreement to be signed between the Anti-Terrorism Centre of the CIS (ATC-CIS) and INTERPOL which will provide the centre with direct access to INTERPOL’s I-24/7 global police communications system and access to the organization’s global databases.

“National Central Bureaus provide the essential link between officers on the frontline and the international policing community as a whole, and this meeting is an important step in furthering this co-operation,” said Petter Dyhre, Assistant Chief of Police for Norway and INTERPOL Executive Committee delegate for Europe.

Expansion of access to INTERPOL’s communications network beyond the NCBs into the hands of officers in the field to enable them to conduct instant checks against the organization’s global databases to identify wanted persons, stolen vehicles and stolen and lost travel documents is also high on the agenda.

“Ensuring that law enforcement officers across the CIS states can quickly and securely exchange information and access global databases is important for regional and international security which is why expansion of access to INTERPOL’s network must be a priority for the region, “said Russian Police Major General Konstantin Machabely, INTERPOL Executive Committee delegate for Europe.

NCB Moscow has already expanded connection to I-24/7 to more than 40 sites throughout Russia, with expansion in five other CIS countries - Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan - expected to be completed by the end of 2010.