Vladimir Putin: CST member-countries back anti-terrorist coalition

All member-countries of the Collective Security Treaty (CST) -- Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan -- are unanimous in that the international anti-terrorist coalition "deserves full backing," Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday, replying to journalists' questions. At the same time, he emphasised that our position is also that all actions by the anti-terrorist coalition should be "coordinated within the UN and the UN Security Council." According to him, the CST organisation being set up "may be an element" of a new system of collective security. In this connection the Russian president pointed to the need for cooperation between this organisation, on the one hand, and NATO and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, on the other (which groups Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrghyzstan and Uzbekistan). Putin stressed once again that a new level of cooperation "is one of the elements of collective security." According to him, the need for new cooperation mechanisms made itself particularly desperate following the September 11 tragedy. In the Russian president's view, these "sad consequences" came about as a result of, in particular, the failure to understand that with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the ending of confrontation between the two systems "an entirely different situation" emerged in the world.