Armenia asks CSTO to remove country assistance document from agenda

Armenia asked the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) to remove the country assistance document from the agenda, CSTO Secretary General Imangali Tasmagambetov said as he met with Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko on 20 November, BelTA has learned.

Imangali Tasmagambetov expressed gratitude to the Belarusian head of state for the opportunity to discuss the current work of the CSTO and issues related to the organization's activities ahead of the upcoming important events. On 22 November, Minsk will host meetings of the CSTO Defense Ministers Council, the CSTO Foreign Ministers Council and the CSTO Committee of Secretaries of Security Councils. The CSTO Collective Security Council session is scheduled for 23 November.

“As for the status of the action plan to the decisions of the Collective Security Council adopted at the November session last year and the priority areas of Belarus, I would like to report that 32 out of 34 measures have been implemented. Two measures have not been fulfilled unfortunately. These are, first of all, our international contacts with European international organizations, such as the OSCE, primarily because of their stance. The second item was the Armenia assistance document which the Collective Security Council instructed us to finalize. Armenia, although all other member states supported the document, did not express any interest in it and, in the final part of our work, asked us to remove the document from the agenda,” the CSTO secretary general said.

As BelTA reported earlier, at the CSTO summit in Yerevan in November 2022, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan refused to sign the draft decision of the Collective Security Council on joint assistance measures for Armenia. The then CSTO Secretary General Stanislav Zas told the media that the document had been generally agreed upon and a set of measures to assist Armenia had been defined. However, the draft document needed finalization on a number of positions. The heads of state instructed to finalize the document and submit it to them for approval.