Tajik President Emomali Rahmon has left for the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek to attend an informal summit of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) that is being held in the Kyrgyz capital today.
Citing the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, Russian media outlets report Russian President Vladimir Putin is holding an informal meeting with leaders of Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in Bishkek today.
According to him, the CSTO informal summit is taking place on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the founding of organization.
Bishkek is also scheduled to host a meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council at the level of the leaders of the countries of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) today.
According to the Kremlin press service, the leaders of the EAEU member nations (Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia, and Kyrgyzstan) will discuss questions of deepening of integration, removing trade barriers, and identification of the principal benchmarks of macroeconomic policy of the countries-participants of the Union for the coming years. The agenda also included the issues of international activities of EAEU, development of economic cooperation with foreign partners.
Assigning of EAEU observer status to Moldova will also be discussed at the meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council in Bishkek
The regional security organization was initially formed in 1992 for a five-year period by the members of the CIS Collective Security Treaty (CST) — Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, which were joined by Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Belarus the following year. A 1994 treaty reaffirmed the desire of all participating states to abstain from the use or threat of force, and prevented signatories from joining any “other military alliances or other groups of states” directed against members states. The CST was then extended for another five-year term in April 1999, and was signed by the presidents of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan. In October 2002, the group was renamed as the CSTO. Uzbekistan that suspended its membership in 1999 returned to the CSTO again in 2006 after it came under international criticism for its brutal crackdown of antigovernment demonstrations in the eastern city of Andijon in May 2005. On June 28, 2012, Uzbekistan announced that it has suspended its membership of the CSTO, saying the organization ignores Uzbekistan and does not consider its views. The CSTO is currently an observer organization at the United Nations General Assembly.
