MINSK, 3 January (BelTA) – Stanislav Zas took over as Secretary General of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) on 1 January 2020, BelTA has learned.
The process of appointing a representative of Belarus as CSTO Secretary General took almost a year and was accompanied by rumors in the media. As Stanislav Zas reported to BelTA earlier, the appointment of the CSTO secretary general is an important but not crucial issue on the scale of the six states, members of the organization. “It should be clearly understood: whoever is at the helm of the CSTO Secretariat, the organization will act in accordance with the charter and joint decisions of the heads of member countries. Such an algorithm rules out unilateral advantages,” he explained.
In 2018, Armenia recalled its representative Yuri Khachaturov from the position as CSTO Secretary General after he had spent a year and a half on the post out of the envisaged three-year term. Valery Semerikov temporarily acted as CSTO secretary general.
The Collective Security Treaty Organization is a regional international organization that fosters “peace, international and regional security and stability, independence, territorial integrity and sovereignty of the member states”. The CSTO member states are Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan.
