MOSCOW, 16 May (BelTA) – Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko made a number of proposals to strengthen the CSTO in the current unprecedented situation at the CSTO summit in Moscow on 16 May, BelTA has learned.
"What needs to be done to strengthen the CSTO in the current unprecedented situation? For now I have the following proposals that are of top priority. There are a lot of them. Emomali Sharipovich [Tajikistan President Emomali Rahmon] spoke a lot about them once when talking about the problem of that region," the head of state said.
To strengthen political interaction and coordination
First, there is a need to strengthen political interaction and coordination among the CSTO member states. "We need to raise the efficiency of the mechanism of consultations on foreign policy and security issues. We need to speak more often on behalf of the CSTO in international organizations so that the voice and position of the organization should be visible and heard. This voice and position should be united. Like that of the West," he said.
The head of state invited the foreign ministers to think about how to do this to achieve the best effect: "They should think about how we should react politically to the new wave of NATO enlargement, taking into account the voiced intentions of certain states. We must develop the CSTO's position on this issue in advance and convey it to the international community. We must be united on this. It is not only Russia that must express concern and fight alone the attempts to expand NATO."
To strengthen information security, fight against fakes
Secondly, Aleksandr Lukashenko spoke of the need to increase the efficiency of countering challenges and threats in media landscape, including fake news and disinformation. "It is clear that they have waged a hybrid war against us, in which the main component part is an information war. We need to make the maximum use of the 2017 CSTO agreement on cooperation in the field of information security, to more actively promote the CSTO in social networks, which are intensively used by our Western opponents, in order to effectively respond to fake news," the Belarusian leader said.
“We need to think seriously about it and maybe follow the path of China in the information warfare, especially on the internet,” the head of state said.
According to him, appropriate tasks should be set for everyone - foreign ministries, special services and the CSTO secretariat.
To strengthen forecast and analytical work
Thirdly, there is an obvious need to strengthen the forecast and analytical component in the work of the CSTO Secretariat, the Belarusian head of state said: “I am confident that the UN, the EU and NATO have similar structures. Perhaps we should think about setting up a unit in the Secretariat responsible for analysis and strategic planning. I think the Secretary General should work on this issue.”
To unite potential of analytical centers
“Fourthly, it makes sense to think about uniting the potential of analytical centers of the CSTO member states and developing a network of these structures to assist in the preparation of conceptual documents on topical issues of the international agenda,” the Belarusian leader said.
Summing up, Aleksandr Lukashenko said that he offered seemingly simple things at that difficult time, but it was due to the fact that the parties might not agree on more complicated issues immediately. “Maybe these will be the first steps. We should go further and deeper, as we said before,” the president stressed.
