Cis Parliament Speakers Agree For Unified Legal Basis

The parliaments of CIS countries signatory to the Collective Security Treaty will shortly pass bills to provide a legal basis for the treaty, determined today's council session of the CIS Interparliamentary Assembly, which gathered spokesmen of the Collective Security Treaty countries. Yegor Stroyev, Interparliamentary Assembly President and Speaker of the Federation Council, the Russian parliament's upper house, addressed newsmen after the session. As he said, such bills must be urgently passed to overcome discrepancies between treaty countries' constitutions. Not all constitutions explicitly specify whether final decision-making belongs to parliament or the head of state, and who of these is guarantor of security within the Commonwealth of Independent States. The American tragedy of September 11 and anti-terror warfare in Afghanistan call for rapid retaliation forces and for urgent legislative arrangements. As Mr. Stroyev said with special emphasis, all parliament Speakers who had addressed the session promised to have legal bases of the Collective Security Treaty urgently formalised in legislative acts. None of the Parties were offering any ticklish issues to the session, he added. The Collective Security Treaty has been signed for now by Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan.