Tajikistan uses all available opportunities to provide its security and protect its vital interests.
Shukurjon Zuhurov, Chairman of the Majlisi Namoyandagon (Tajikistan’s lower house of parliament), remarked this in Dushanbe on October 28 while delivering a statement at a joint session of the Coordination Conference of Chairpersons of Committees (Commissions) on Defense and Security of Parliaments of Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) Member Nations.
“Priority is given to political-diplomatic and other non-military tools,” Zuhurov said noting that the country’s military potential is provided by agreements signed with the Russian Federation, including the agreement on presence deployment of the Russian military base in Tajikistan, and “agreements on countering external aggression, terrorism and crime in the format of the CIS, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).”
According to him, the main source of instability is northern Afghanistan. “The military and political situation in the northern provinces of Afghanistan practically excludes settlement without participation of international community,” Tajik parliament speaker said.
Presided over by Vladimir Shamanov, the head of the State Duma (Russia’s lower chamber of parliament) Committee on Defense, a two-day session that kicked off on October 28 is discussing the current military and political situation in the CSTO area of responsibility in the Central Asian region.
The session participants will also discuss a number of draft documents, including recommendations on improvement of national laws of the CST member states on peacekeeping forces, recommendations on approximation of the national laws on confiscation of property in the interest of countering corruption, financing of terrorism and other types of crime, and the plan of work of CSTO Parliamentary Assembly (PA CSTO) for 2020.
