YEREVAN, 23 November (BelTA) - There is an opportunity to establish full-fledged cooperation between the CSTO, the CIS, and the SCO, CSTO Secretary General Stanislav Zas said in his speech at a joint meeting of the CSTO Foreign Ministers Council, the CSTO Defense Ministers Council and the CSTO Committee of Secretaries of Security Councils in Yerevan on 23 November, BelTA has learned.
“In order to consolidate the efforts to ensure international and regional security, the CSTO continues to work on integrating the potential of international organizations that share our goals and principles. We attach great importance for the CIS to acquire the observer status in the CSTO as soon as possible. The compatibility of interests of the CSTO, the CIS and the SCO and the proximity of their approaches to many pressing international issues let us move toward full-scale trilateral cooperation,” said Stanislav Zas.
In his words, great attention is paid to strengthening interaction with the UN. Consistent work is underway to integrate the collective peacekeeping potential of the CSTO into UN peacekeeping operations. “At this stage it is important to ratify the protocol on the introduction of changes to the agreement on the CSTO peacekeeping activities, which provides for a coordinating state within the CSTO, authorized to act on behalf of the partners in contacts with the UN Department for Peace Operations,” he said.
Another area of joint work is the improvement of CSTO crisis response mechanisms. The first practical experience in this regard was a peacekeeping operation in Kazakhstan in January 2022.
