Simonian said that he had informed his CSTO colleagues that he would not attend the event that he said is scheduled for December.
“There is no answer from them until now. And I think there won’t be. I am sure that the reasons for my not participating are clear to them,” said Alen Simonian, denying, at the same time, that this amounts to “freezing of relations.”
“Armenia does not have a decision to withdraw from the CSTO, but I believe that my participation in the given event is not appropriate in the current situation. And the situation is that the CSTO does not fulfill its obligations and did not fulfill its obligations in the past either,” the Armenian parliament speaker said.
Earlier this month Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian announced that he will not attend the CSTO summit due to be held in Minsk on November 23. Armenia’s foreign minister and defense minister are not attending the meetings of their colleagues gathering in the Belarusian capital on Wednesday either.
CSTO Secretary-General Imangali Tasmagambetov said earlier this week that official Yerevan had asked to remove the issue of providing military assistance to Armenia from the summit agenda.
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 did not publicly call Azerbaijan the aggressor and refused to back Armenia militarily, while agreeing to consider sending an observation mission to the South Caucasus country.
At the CSTO summit held in Yerevan in November 2022 Armenia declined such a mission, saying that before it could be carried out it needed to give 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, the Armenian prime minister told the parliament in Yerevan earlier this month that the “fundamental problem” with the CSTO was that this organization had 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.
Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, on Wednesday again lamented the decision by the Armenian leader not to attend the Minsk summit of the CSTO. But he added, according to Russia’s TASS news agency, that the Kremlin expects that “Armenia will continue its work within the framework of the organization.”
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