A regular meeting of the CSTO Council of Foreign Ministers was held in Dushanbe
Dushanbe, May 19, 2021
– Deputy Prime Minister – Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Kazakhstan Mukhtar Tleuberdi took part in a meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). During the event, the Foreign Ministers discussed a wide range of issues of the current activities of the CSTO and the prospects for its development, exchanged views on topical issues of the international agenda.
M. Tleuberdi informed the participants of the meeting about Kazakhstan’s position on cooperation in the format of the Organization, made a number of proposals aimed at further comprehensive development of this organization. Special attention was paid to the implementation of the initiative of the President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Zhomart Tokayev on the establishment of the institution of the Special Representative of the CSTO Secretary General on Peacekeeping Issues, which was put forward at the December CSTO Summit in 2020. The Minister expressed gratitude to his colleagues and the CSTO Secretary General Stanislav Zas for a detailed dialogue and practical ideas on the proposal of the President of Kazakhstan.
Following the meeting, the ministers approved draft documents, a number of which will be submitted to the session of the CSTO Collective Security Council, scheduled for the fourth quarter of this year in Dushanbe. Among them are the Agreement on Jurisdiction and Legal Assistance in Cases related to the temporary presence of forces and means of the collective security system in the territories of the CSTO member states, the Action Plan dedicated to the 30th anniversary of the signing of the Collective Security Treaty and the 20th anniversary of the CSTO.
The heads of the foreign affairs agencies also adopted four political statements – on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Judgment of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, on strengthening the Convention on the Prohibition of Biological and Toxin Weapons, on CSTO cooperation with states and international organizations, on the extension of the Treaty between Russia and the United States on further reduction and limitation of strategic offensive arms.
The CSTO was established in 2002 and is an international regional organization, which, along with Kazakhstan, includes Armenia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan. The chairmanship of the Council of Foreign Ministers in accordance with the rotational mechanism adopted in the CSTO this year is entrusted to the Republic of Tajikistan.