The CSTO Secretariat’s statement to this effect made on Tuesday follows a statement by the organization’s Secretary-General Imangali Tasmagambetov made the previous day during a meeting with Belarusian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka, the formal host of the upcoming summit, that Yerevan had asked the CSTO to remove the issue of providing military assistance to Armenia from the organization’s agenda.
“Out of the 34 decisions made at the Collective Security Council meeting [in Yerevan] in November last year, only two have not been implemented. One of them was the re-editing of the Council’s decision on assistance to Armenia. Despite the fact that all other allies supported this decision, the Armenian side did not show any interest in that document. Moreover, at the final stage of the work on the document the Armenian side asked for it to be removed from the agenda altogether,” the Kazakh head of the CSTO said.
Armenia had appealed to the CSTO for military assistance in September 2022 following two-day deadly border clashes with Azerbaijan that Yerevan said stemmed from Baku’s aggression against sovereign Armenian territory.
The Russia-led bloc that also includes Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan never called out the aggressor, while agreeing to consider sending an observation mission to Armenia.
At the CSTO summit held in Yerevan in November 2022 Armenia declined such a mission unless it gave a clear political assessment of what Yerevan said was Azerbaijan’s aggression and occupation of sovereign Armenian territory.
Explaining his decision to skip the Minsk summit, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian told the parliament in Yerevan earlier this month that the “fundamental problem” with the CSTO was that this organization has refused “to de-jure fixate its area of responsibility in Armenia.”
“In these conditions this could mean that by silently participating [in the summit] we could join the logic that would question Armenia’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. We can’t allow ourselves to do such a thing, and by making such decisions [not to attend CSTO gatherings] we give the CSTO and ourselves time to think over further actions,” Pashinian said.
During the November 15 question-and-answer session in parliament the Armenian leader refused to be drawn into the discussion of whether Armenia planned to formally quit the CSTO, nor would he speak about any security alternatives to membership in this organization.
“We are not planning to announce a change in our policy in strategic terms as long as we haven’t made a decision to quit the CSTO,” Pashinian said.
While official Yerevan has not yet confirmed that it had asked for the document on assistance to Armenia to be removed from the CSTO agenda, Hakob Arshakian, a deputy parliament speaker representing Pashinian’s ruling Civil Contract party, implied that such a move would only be natural given that the CSTO has not changed its attitude.
“That’s the problem that was openly discussed in the works related to the CSTO, that is, these issues arose from there, and the reason is the same,” Arshakian told reporters.
Last year, the then Secretary-General of the CSTO Stanislav Zas said that the heads of member states had ordered him to finalize the document on sending an observation mission to Armenia and submit it for signing. Official Yerevan has not reported any efforts by the CSTO to amend that document over the past year.
It also became known on Tuesday that Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and Defense Minister Suren Papikian will not attend the meetings of their counterparts from CSTO member states that are scheduled to be held in Minsk on November 22.
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