Cooperation within the CSTO is gaining new momentum

10 / 10 / 2011

Regular quarterly sitting of interdepartmental commission coordinating implementation of events planned within CSTO chaired by NSC Secretary Arthur Baghdasaryan․ In his opening remarks, NSC Secretary Arthur Baghdasaryan said: “During the third quarter of the CSTO quite serious events took place. First of all, the informal summit of the CSTO member-states was held in Kazakhstan. There were meetings of the Committee of Secretaries of the Security Council, the Committee of Foreign Ministers and the Committee of Ministers of Defense, where important decisions were taken, of which I would like to highlight a few. At the first informal summit of presidents it was decided to make changes in the CSTO Charter, and then the military and political cooperation between the Republic of Armenia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus and other CSTO member states will be strengthened as a result of these charter changes, on which political agreement has been reached. Secondly, today we can already state that within the framework of the CSTO there will be set up about 20,000 Special Operational Response Units, which can be used in case of threats to the CSTO member states. The third important thing is that within the framework of the CSTO it was decided to create peacekeeping forces. We can say today that about 3,000 peacekeeping units will be established within the CSTO, which is also important. We also consider positive the deepening of military-technical cooperation within the CSTO member states, and our military-political alliance seems to be getting more meat and blood as a result of these decisions”. During the meeting Deputy Foreign Minister Sh․ Kocharyan, Deputy Minister of Economy G․ Badalyan and representatives of other Ministries of the Republic of Armenia delivered reports on the work done by the Ministries and Departments of Armenia within the framework of the CSTO in the third quarter of 2011.