Zas: CSTO taking measures to strengthen peace and stability in member states

YEREVAN, June 17. /ARKA/. The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) is taking all necessary measures to strengthen peace and stability in its member states and is ready to protect their interests, CSTO Secretary General Stanislav Zas told a meeting of the CSTO Committee of Secretaries of Security Councils in Yerevan today.

"The CSTO (Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Russia) principled position remains unchanged: we are convinced of the need for a political settlement of all existing conflicts and we call on all forces that affect international security to do so. Along with this, we are taking all necessary measures to strengthen peace and stability in the CSTO member states and are ready to defend their interests," he stated.

Zas also noted the growing threats to the security of the CSTO member-states in several directions simultaneously.

"One of the main instruments of ensuring the security of the member states and counteracting challenges and threats is to build up the capacity of collective security forces as well as to organize close cooperation between special services and law enforcement bodies in carrying out operational and preventive measures," he said.

According to Zas, in conditions of increasing challenges and threats to ICT, ensuring the security of critical information infrastructure has become one of the priority tasks for all CSTO member states.

The CSTO Secretary General said that a lot of work was to be done this year to organize practical activities of the Coordinating Council on ensuring biological security of the member states.

"Taking into consideration the discussion of the issues of operational response to the challenges and threats to the security of our states, the CSTO Secretariat is preparing a package of regulatory legal acts to improve the system of crisis response, which we plan to present at the autumn session of the statutory bodies. Thus, taking into account the current situation, we have serious tasks to accomplish in order to strengthen the comprehensive potential of our organization and continue to work towards enhancing the status of the CSTO in the international arena," he said. -0-