Foreign and Defence Ministers of the member-countries of the Collective Security Treaty will have a joint session in Moscow

The Foreign and Defence Ministers of the member-countries of the Collective Security Treaty (CST) - Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kirghizia, Russia and Tajikistan - will have a joint session of the Council of Foreign Ministers and the Council of Defence Ministers in Moscow on Monday. This session will take place on the eve of the session of the Collective Security Council, scheduled for May 14, which will be held at the level of the Presidents of the Treaty's member-countries. As has been reported by the apparatus of the Secretary General, at this session its participants will approve the agenda of the CST session, will consider draft documents submitted to the CST, exchange views on the role and the place of the CST, taking into consideration the changes in the geopolitical situation in the area of its operation and will also discuss other questions of mutual interest. Apart from that, the session participants will have to draft a joint Statement of the CST heads of state in which they will fix the common position of the participants in Treaty on its further perfection and transformation into an inter-state regional organisation. It is expected that appropriate decisions will be taken to create, within the framework of the Collective Security Treaty, an inter-state military-headquarters body of collective security and to put into action a mechanism for advantageous military and technological cooperation aimed at a further rapprochement and more active cooperation between regional collective security systems. The Collective Security Treaty is an international agreement, independent of the CIS, which was signed on May 15, 1992 by six states -- Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kirghizia, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. In 1993, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Belarus joined the Treaty. In prolonging the Treaty in 1999, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Uzbekistan withdrew from it.