DUSHANBE, December 19, 2012, Asia-Plus — Tajik President Emomali Rahmon is attending the session of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) Collective Security Council that is being held in Moscow today.
According to the Tajik MFA information department, a joint meeting of the CSTO foreign and defense ministers and security council secretaries that has opened in Moscow today morning is preceding the CSTO summit.
The joint meeting is reportedly considering the summit’s agenda that includes a number of international and regional issues, including the current situation in Afghanistan, interaction between the CSTO member nations on improvement of collective security system and collective response to emergencies.
Russian media sources note that Uzbekistan’s suspension of the CSTO membership will also be among major topics of the CSTO summit in Moscow.
We will recall that Uzbekistan announced on June 28 this year that it has suspended its membership of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, saying the organization ignores Uzbekistan and does not consider its views.
The regional security organization was initially set up in 1992 in a meeting in Tashkent and Uzbekistan once already suspended its membership in 1999. However, Tashkent 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.
The alliance 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. The CSTO is currently an observer organization at the United Nations General Assembly.
