(RIA Novosti) - The Collective Security Treaty Organization should be able to provide a quick and adequate response to all kinds of threats, not only military, the Russian defense minister said Thursday.
The heads of CSTO member states - Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan - are meeting Thursday in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, to discuss sweeping reforms of the regional security organization and set priorities for future activities, reports Trend.
"The CSTO should be able to quickly react to all existing threats," Ivanov, who is also deputy prime minister, told a news conference.
He also said that the joint Russian-Belarusian exercise Union Shield 2006, currently under way in Belarus, was not aimed against any particular country or military bloc, adding that the organization conducted such exercises every year on a rotating basis.
Nikolai Bordyuzha, the secretary general of the post-Soviet collective security group, said in May that the CSTO, founded in 2002, would form its own peacekeeping forces, collective forces to tackle emergency situations, and a number of auxiliary bodies to combat extremism and illegal migration.
...