DUSHANBE, May 25, 2015, Asia-Plus – A two-day session of the Coordination Panel of Heads of Parliament Defense and Security Committee from the Collective Security Treaty Organization (SCTO) member nations at the Council of the CSTO Parliament Assembly will kick off in Dushanbe on May 26.
Members of the Defense and Security Committees from both Chambers of Tajik Parliament will participate in the meeting that will discuss the current military and political situation in the Central Asian region.
Senior representatives from Tajikistan’s border troops, ministry of defense, anticorruption agency, counternarcotics agency and emergencies committee will also attend the meeting, an official source at Tajikistan’s lower house (Majlisi Namoyandagon) of parliament told Asia-Plus in an interview.
CSTO Secretary-General Nikolai Bordyuzha will deliver a statement at the meeting on state and prospects of further development of the military component of the Organization against the background of decisions made at the CSTO Collective Security Council that took place in December last year as well as on the latest developments in Afghanistan.
The meeting participants are scheduled to visit Tajik counternarcotics agency, airborne brigade of the defense ministry of Tajikistan, and a stretch of Tajik-Afghan border, the source said.
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 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.
