With the growing unrest in the Middle East the issues of regional politics and international security gain special importance. The majority of experts have no doubt that the conflicts in the neighboring region will lead to negative developments on the post-Soviet space as well, especially on the Caucasus and in Central Asia. The Secretary General of the Collective Security Treaty Organization Nikolay Bordyuzha told the press-conference what is to be done in order to prevent such negative developments.
“In 2011 our attention was focused on practical implementation of the crisis security mechanisms developed y the CSTO earlier. We elaborated plans for peacemaking operations, created secure video-link channels for our states’ high authorities in order to conduct live-time consultations in case of crisis; we discussed the program of Collective Rapid Reaction Force armaments, conducted war games.
The organization’s Parliamentary Assembly coordinated the foreign policy of the member-countries. I believe we’ve achieved a great deal of success in this field, we managed to elaborate a common position on a number of complex foreign politics problems.
We also intensified our efforts in fighting drag-trafficking in Central Asia, we created a coordinating inter-governmental structure.
In the past year 34 contracts on armament shipments on preferential terms were fulfilled. The member-states saved some 10 million euro on these preferential shipments. Russia also delivered favorable education opportunities in the field of security for citizens of CSTO member-states.
I am convinced that all the terrorist activity in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan is a result of the efforts of international Islamist terrorist groups based in Afghanistan. They’ve focused their infiltration efforts on the region of Central Region for quite a while now.
We conduct regular meetings of the high officials of the CIS, EurAsEC, CSTO and SCO and try to coordinate our effort in order to prevent repetition in our actions. I believe that such organizations as the EurAsEC or the Union State of Russia and Belarus should occupy themselves with economic projects while we have to act in close cooperation with them in order to ensure the security of these projects, just like the EU and NATO.
Today Russia’s cooperation with Belarus is the closest on the post-Soviet space, and Belarus’ leadership has always been very active in the issues of our collective security. During Belarus’ chairmanship in the CSTO a number of very important initiatives was put forward and accepted by the organization. For example, on Belarusian initiative we signed a protocol on peacemaking activities with the UN. The program of Collective Rapid Reaction Force armaments is also a Belarusian initiative, as well as the mechanism of rapid reaction to anthropogenic and natural disasters”.
Nikolay Bordyuzha also touched upon the issue of possible NATO membership of post-Soviet space and said that even though this idea is not new, such a development would most likely have negative effect on the region’s security in general.
