CIS collective security chief upbeat on cooperation with OSCE

Interfax news agency
10 May 05

MOSCOW

The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) is ready to
cooperate closely with all interested international organizations and
countries in the interests of ensuring security and stability in the
region and the world, CSTO Secretary-General Nikolay Bordyuzha told
Interfax-AVN on Tuesday [10 May] before leaving for Vienna to attend
an OSCE forum on security cooperation due on 11-14 May.

“We proceed from the fact that the OSCE as a wide-scale pan-European
mechanism allows all member-countries to be equally involved in
forming the architecture of European security,” Bordyuzha said.

“Because of its universal nature, the OSCE is the only organization
that can undertake the task of removing dividing lines on the European
continent and preventing new ones,” Bordyuzha believes.

“A whole gamut of measures worked out by the OSCE to enhance
confidence, security and arms control is seen by the CSTO as a special
security net for harmonizing security interests and ensuring stability
and predictability in Europe and neighbouring regions,” Bordyuzha
stressed.

According to Bordyuzha, it is already possible to speak about stable
contacts between the OSCE and the CSTO, whose representatives are
regular active participants in events held within the OSCE format.

“In particular, the CSTO took a very active part in preparing the OSCE
forum’s main document on recent security cooperation: the strategy of
reacting to threats to security and stability in the 21st century,”
Bordyuzha said.

The CSTO secretary-general will be taking part in an OSCE forum on
security cooperation for the first time ever.

The forum on security cooperation was set up in accordance with the
resolutions of the OSCE Helsinki summit in July 1992. The forum was
endorsed as an integral part of the OSCE and is an autonomous body
which comprises delegations of all the 55 OSCE member states.

The main objectives of the forum are to conduct negotiations on arms
control, disarmament and building confidence and security; to hold
regular consultations and closely cooperate on the issues of security
and to continue to reduce the danger of possible new conflicts.

A package of decisions in the military-political sphere has been
passed within the framework of the forum, in particular, documents on
scrapping excessive conventional arms and on increasing control over
the proliferation of portable air defence missile systems.

The forum’s decisions are politically binding.

Currently the CSTO has six members, Russia, Belarus, Armenia,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Its main supreme body is the
Collective Security Council (CSC) which consists of the
member-countries’ heads of state.