Aleksandr Lukashenko holds meeting with CSTO Secretary General Nikolai Bordyuzha

    The development of the military component of the Collective Security Treaty Organization and the situation in the CSTO’s responsibility area were discussed at the meeting of President of Belarus Aleksandr Lukashenko and Secretary General of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) Nikolai Bordyuzha.

    Aleksandr Lukashenko said: “We are on the right track. I’ve returned from the far and complicated region of Southeastern Asia. During negotiations I was meeting with officials and noted everyone proudly saying that they were merging into unions, trade and economic ones for now. But if there are common interests, then sometime soon they will have to preventively protect their interests using military ways, too, since politics naturally follows economics”.

    “This is why the entire world gets united into similar organizations, not only in Southeastern Asia,” continued the President. “While in the region of the Persian Gulf, meeting with officials, I was told the same, that the Gulf countries are going for a common customs space, a common economic policy, which is being worked out now. Well, we know how the Gulf countries can mount a collective defense by the example of Bahrain. When the situation got complicated, Saudi Arabia helped out and other countries did”.

    “I say it because we have nothing to be ashamed of while saying that we have a military organization and we will bolster it in different ways. I think it should be the motto for our informal meeting that we plan to hold in Kyrgyzstan,” remarked the head of state.

    Nikolai Bordyuzha informed Aleksandr Lukashenko about the progress in implementing the decisions made by the Collective Security Council in December 2012 and preparations for sessions of the charter bodies of the Organization.

    “We have started implementing the decisions, in my opinion, breakthrough ones, which the presidents made at the regular session of the Collective Security Council in December, including the decisions regarding in essence the reformation of military cooperation, the advancement to a quality new level,” remarked the Secretary General.

    Nikolai Bordyuzha mentioned the adopted decision to set up the CSTO collective forces that will be made of various military structures of the organization. “We have completed the preparation of the concept to create the CSTO collective air force as an additional component that will enable air coverage of possible operations, will enable possible airlift for CSTO forces if some security missions have to be accomplished. Now we are working on the concept to create the collective special operations forces,” he said.
    Apart from that, Aleksandr Lukashenko was informed about preparations for the forthcoming informal summit of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, which is supposed to take place in Kyrgyzstan in May 2013. In particular, the matters that need to be discussed at the meeting of the presidents were reviewed. Opinions about the development of the situation in the CSTO space as a whole were shared.