Azernews.Az

Azerbaijan's government has had some success in reducing the presence of terrorist facilitators and hampering their activities last year, the U.S. State Department has said in a report.

The Country Reports on Terrorism 2011, released by the Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, says Azerbaijan actively opposed terrorist organizations seeking to move people, money, and material through the Caucasus.

"Government law enforcement bodies pursued suspected terrorist groups and facilitators operating in Azerbaijan and implemented measures to strengthen border security and maritime domain awareness," says the report, posted on the State Department website. "The Government of Azerbaijan completed the modernization of its Central Reference Laboratory, a state-of-the-art biosafety facility that will make joint research on potential bioterrorism threats possible."

The report also says that through the Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation Prevention Program, the Azerbaijani government assumed responsibility for the sustainment of seven radar stations along the Caspian coast used by the Navy, Coast Guard, and State Border Service to conduct maritime surveillance and detect smuggling threats.

"On border security, the State Border Service installed new portal monitors during its upgrade at the Ganja international airport, a project assisted by the Department of Energy's Second Line of Defense Program (SLD). Azerbaijan also launched the National Communication System pilot project, a new SLD initiative to centralize information received from portal monitors at various border crossings," the report says.

Azerbaijan is a member of the Committee of Experts on the Evaluation of Anti-Money Laundering Measures and the Financing of Terrorism (MONEYVAL), a Financial Action Task Force-style regional body. According to the report, the Azerbaijani government has demonstrated an increasing level of professionalism in anti-money laundering and counterterrorist financing (AML/CTF) since 2009, when it adopted AML/CTF legislation.

The report said that throughout 2011, working groups composed of representatives of Azerbaijan and the other four Caspian Sea littoral states met to coordinate law enforcement efforts aimed at countering terrorism as well as smuggling, narcotics trafficking, and organized crime in the Caspian. This work followed up on a November 2010 security cooperation agreement among the littoral states.