DUSHANBE, December 20, 2011, Asia-Plus — Tajik President Emomali Rahmon met with his Kyrgyz counterpart Almazbek Atambayev Tuesday morning in Moscow on the sidelines of the CIS and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) informal summits.
According to the Tajik presidential press service, Rahmon once again congratulated Atambayev on wining Kyrgyzstan’s presidential election and stressed that Tajikistan attached significance to expansion of close and multi-aspect cooperation with Kyrgyzstan.
The two, in particular, discussed the Central Asia South Asia Electricity Trade and Transmission Project (CASA 1000), which aims to develop the necessary physical infrastructure and create the institutional and legal framework to transmit surplus power available from existing generation facilities in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan to Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Construction of a new railway link connecting China, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan as well as issues related to delineation of border between the two countries and regional security were also among major topics of the meeting, the source said.
CSTO is the regional security organization that 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; the treaty was signed by the presidents of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan. In October 2002, the group was renamed as the CSTO. Uzbekistan became a full participant of the organization on June 23, 2006. The CSTO holds yearly military command exercises for the CSTO nations to have an opportunity to improve inter-organization cooperation. The CSTO is an observer organization at the United Nations General Assembly.
The organization now groups Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
