Shanghai six has no military build-up plans – Russian minister
RIA news agency
6 Jun 05
Moscow, 6 June: The Shanghai Cooperation Organization [SCO] member
countries [China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and
Uzbekistan] are not planning to create any kind of a military
structure, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has asserted.
“The SCO does not envisage having military structures. We are speaking
about organizing very close cooperation between state bodies involved
in fighting terrorism, organized crime and drug trafficking. No
special brigades are being planned,” Lavrov said in an interview with
the Vremya Novostey newspaper.
He recalled that rapid-reaction forces for countering possible
external threats had been created within the framework of the
Collective Security Treaty Organization [comprising Russia, Belarus,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Armenia]. “But nothing of this
kind is being planned with the SCO. Nobody has ever proposed this,”
Lavrov said.
The SCO members will maintain cooperation between their law
enforcement bodies and special services in real time so that “those
who are planning extremist or, more than that, violent acts in SCO
member countries could be switched off instantly”, he said.
Commenting upon the common view that countries should sometimes
sacrifice their sovereignty in an emergency, Lavrov said that national
sovereignty would not be limited.
“The same kind of cooperation is carried out within the UN
antiterrorist committee, to which all countries report on the measures
taken by their law enforcement bodies and special services to reveal
and frustrate terrorist plots,” he said.
To answer a question about the possible creation of a second Russian
military base in Kyrgyzstan, the minister recalled that the Kyrgyz
leadership had denied media reports about a corresponding proposal it
allegedly made to Russia.
“Nobody has addressed us officially. The Kyrgyz leadership has a
sovereign right to decide upon the ways of to safeguard their national
security. This question has not been discussed,” Lavrov said.