Eurasia Daily Monitor, DC
The Jamestown Foundation
June 24 2005

CIS COLLECTIVE SECURITY TREATY ORGANIZATION HOLDS SUMMIT

By Vladimir Socor

Friday, June 24, 2005

Putin and Belarusian President Lukashenko at the CIS CSTO meeting. On
June 22-23, Moscow hosted a meeting of the heads of state of the CIS
Collective Security Treaty Organization (Russia, Belarus, Armenia,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan) and concurrent meetings of the
CSTO countries’ ministers of foreign affairs, defense ministers, and
secretaries of the national security councils.

The meetings approved a framework plan on CSTO development in two
stages — through 2010 and beyond — as well as plans to upgrade the
Collective Rapid Deployment Forces in Central Asia and to create an
inter-state commission for handling deliveries and servicing of
military equipment at preferential prices. These measures have been
on the agenda for several years but hardly showed any results.

Far more significantly, this summit decided to separate the CIS Joint
Air Defense System (nominally of ten countries) from that of the
CSTO’s planned United Air Defense System (six member countries). The
Joint System consists of forces under national command, exercising
periodically under coordination from a center in Russia, and regards
each country’s airspace as distinct and sovereign. The planned United
System consists of forces under a single — that is, Russian —
planning system and command, and it only recognizes a single CSTO
airspace. Russian officials explained the need for separating the two
systems by noting that certain CIS countries are not CSTO members and
aspire to join NATO.

Russian officials moved unobtrusively but unmistakably to exploit
American discomfiture over Uzbekistan. Thus, Minister of Foreign
Affairs Sergei Lavrov, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, Security
Council Secretary Igor Ivanov, and CSTO Secretary-General Nikolai
Bordyuzha all characterized the recent “events” in Andijan
unambiguously as an assault by international terrorism and radical
Islam against Uzbekistan. Citing international obligations to assist
states under terrorist attack, they announced Russia’s support for
the Uzbek leadership’s efforts to stabilize the situation in Andijan
and throughout the country. These statements form part of an
intensifying exchange of political overtures between Moscow and
Tashkent in the wake of the Andijan rebellion, which by the same
token has deepened the misunderstandings between Tashkent and
Washington.

With President Vladimir Putin joining in, those same Russian
officials criticized the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan for
failing to suppress “terrorist training bases, including those
supported by certain intelligence services” (Putin) and for
tolerating the booming export of Afghan heroin to Russia and Europe.
Rating the coalition’s efforts as “very ineffective thus far,” Putin
and other Russian officials hinted that the CSTO is prepared to
consider stepping in. The meeting discussed possible measures to
increase and coordinate assistance to Afghanistan, as well as setting
up “a working group to coordinate with Afghan structures” and a joint
anti-drug authority.

Kyrgyzstan’s post-revolution defense minister, Ismail Isakov, was
authorized by the defense ministers’ session to tell the press that
the creation of a second Russian military base in Kyrgyzstan is
intended. It will, apparently, carry a CSTO label. The CSTO’s
Russian-led military staff has been tasked to determine the possible
missions, troop level, and armament of such a base, and whether it
should be designated as temporary or permanent. Another
post-revolution leader, Felix Kulov, had publicly called last month
for the deployment of a second Russian military base in Kyrgyzstan,
to be located in Osh.

By contrast, Kazakhstan opposed a Russian initiative — presumably
supported by others — to create a joint standing conventional
military force for Central Asia within the CSTO’s framework. Kazakh
Defense Minister General Mukhtar Altynbayev told the press, “Creating
a cumbersome force for permanent stationing would be worthless.” Due
to Kazakhstan’s position, further discussion of this issue was
deferred until the next meeting some months from now (Interfax, June
23).

In the session of Ministers of Foreign Affairs, certain countries
that were not publicly identified successfully resisted proposals on
financing the CSTO. One defeated proposal would have collected
long-overdue contributions from Central Asian member countries to the
CSTO’s budget from the years 1996-2003. Another, more topical measure
that was defeated would have required member countries to co-finance
the development of command-and-control systems for the Collective
Rapid Deployment Forces in Central Asia. The only financial issues
that appeared to be resolved would increase salaries of CSTO
Secretariat personnel by 20% — provided that the extra funding is
taken out of other items of the CSTO budget, so as to avoid a net
increase.

Loyalists had their day, however. Armenian President Robert Kocharian
professed to find comfort “in the CSTO’s lineup, one in which we do
not disagree among ourselves, but strive for practical results”
(Interfax, June 23). Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenka
praised the CSTO as one of the centers of power that provide
counterweights to the “unipolar dictatorship of a single super-power”
[the United States]. Igor Ivanov rewarded his ally by denouncing “the
external forces’ threats of interference in Belarus, where they are
trying to impose political decisions. We reject this kind of actions”
(RIA, June 22).

For the first time in the CSTO’s history, the Russian military now
plans to hold joint ground-force exercises in the organization’s
“western region” and “southern region” — that is, in Belarus and in
Armenia. These exercises are scheduled to be held on the
command-and-staff level in 2006. Thus far, the CSTO has only held
joint ground-force and combined exercises in its Central Asian
region.

At this summit, Putin took over the chairmanship of the Collective
Security Council (the top political authority of the CSTO) from
Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev. That and other CSTO posts
are supposed to rotate annually in the Russian alphabetical order of
the member countries’ names. In this case, Kyrgyzstan was
unceremoniously skipped. Next year, moreover, the CSTO summit will be
held in Belarus, and the honor of chairing the organization will
devolve to Lukashenka.