Azerbaijan, Baku, Sept. 16 / Trend , V.Zhavoronkova/
Despite the passivity of Uzbekistan as a member of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), Tashkent will try to maintain membership in the organization as long as possible, experts believe.
"Uzbekistan will likely remain a member of CSTO for so long as it continues
to be able to participate ", believes Doctor Robert Cutler, leading Expert on Eurasia.
Tashkent, despite its membership in the CSTO, refuses to participate in projects of the organization. For example, Uzbekistan does not participate in the collective rapid reaction force (RRF) as part of the CSTO. Some media reports about Uzbekistan's possible withdrawal from the organization.
However, experts believe that Tashkent does not hurry to leave the organization, as the membership gives Uzbekistan a number of advantages.
Tashkent realizes that it has far more leverage within the organization than it would dropping out entirely, believes Alexander Cooley, American Expert on Central Asia.
According to another American Expert on Central Asia, Bruce Pannier, Uzbekistan will try to keep some sort of membership for as long as possible.
"That does not mean Uzbekistan will be an active participant in the CSTO, I just think that Uzbek President Islam Karimov has been in power long enough, and through enough significant events, to understand he may need help from Russia, or his Central Asian neighbours, sometime in the future," the Expert of Radio Liberty, Pannier wrote to Trend in an email.
"Remaining in the CSTO, even in name only, is consistent with Tashkent's multivectorism, even if it refuses to participate in many of its exercises and initiatives," Member of the Open Society, an Associate Professor at Barnard College, Columbia University, Cooley wrote to Trend in an email.
Uzbekistan has already ceased its membership in the CSTO, the organization, dominated by Russia, and joined the GUAM (GUUAM in the past), which it also quitted and re-joined the CSTO. Also last year, Tashkent suspended its membership in the Eurasian Economic Community (EurAsEc), which is also dominated by Russia. Many experts link these steps of the country with its multi-vector foreign policy.
It's hard to predict the future, especially in a country like Uzbekistan, believes Jeffrey Mankoff, American Expert on Russia.
"While Uzbekistan does not want to cede too much authority to the CSTO or give strengthen Russia's hand in Central Asia, the CSTO as such remains useful from Tashkent's perspective," Acting Director of the International Security Studies at the Yale University, Mankoff wrote to Trend in an email.
The membership at the organization provides a way to keep an eye on what the other Central Asian states are doing, the expert said.
"Of course it won't hurt that Uzbekistan will be able to send representatives to CSTO meetings to hear what the other countries are planning," Pannier said. It decreases the chances for nasty surprises, he added.
So while Uzbekistan is unhappy with some of the CSTO's recent attempts to push integration further, Tashkent is hardly on the verge of withdrawing entirely from the organization, Mankoff believes.
Uzbekistan loses nothing and gains the potential for better information, if not necessarily influence, believes Doctor Cutler, Senior Research Fellow of the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at the Carleton University in Canada.
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