President Emomali Rahmon yesterday received visiting Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) Secretary-General, Nikolai Bordyuzha.
According to the Tajik president’s official website, the two sides discussed the process of implementation of decisions adopted by the CSTO Council of Heads of State and the current situation in the Organization member nations.
Rahmon and Bordyuzha also exchanged views on joint counteraction to international terrorism, religious extremism, drug trafficking, arms trafficking and illegal migration that pose serious threat to the region.
They expressed concern about intensification of activities of terrorist and extremist organizations and spread of alien ideology in the region.
While discussing issues related to providing security along the southern borders of the region, Rahmon and Bordyuzha paid serious attention to the current situation along Tajikistan’s common border with Afghanistan and expansion of cooperation in strengthening potential of Tajik border troops, the website said.
Meanwhile, the CSTO is reportedly struggling to find its new secretary general. Citing unnamed Armenian government sources, Russia’s Interfax news agency reported in early September that Armenian Defense Minister Seyran Ohanian would be appointed as the new CSTO secretary general, replacing Nikolai Bordyuzha, who has been the head of the organization since 2003.
But on September 16, Ohanyan said in an interview with the website news.am that he wouldn't take the job. Asked whether it is true that he will be dismissed from the post of the Defense Minister in October and be appointed as a CSTO Secretary General within the framework of the governmental changes, Ohanyan said: “The changes in the Government can impact anyone. We know what procedures are in place for forming a government and which political and other governmental forces form it. As to my appointment as a CSTO Secretary General, no such offer has [so far] been made”
Asked if he would turn down the job if offered it, he said: "Definitely."
Bordyuzha himself said that his successor would be named by October 14, when a CSTO summit is scheduled in Armenian capital Yerevan, and that it would be an Armenian, according to news.am.
