No need to rush US base withdrawal from Central Asia – CIS security chief
ITAR-TASS news agency, Moscow
27 Jul 05
The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) should be more
proactive when a crisis breaks out in one of its member-states,
Russian ITAR-TASS news agency quoted CSTO secretary-general Nikolay
Bordyuzha as saying in connection with the recent turmoil in
Kyrgyzstan. Bordyuzha said this addressing reporters at the United
Nations headquarters in New York on 26 July, ITAR-TASS reported on 27
July.
“The CSTO could have employed political rather than military means to
prevent the Kyrgyz political struggle from pouring out into the
streets, from the events developing according to a scenario which
ended as looting and violence,” the agency quoted Bordyuzha as
saying. “This is what we could have done. We could not and should not
have got involved in the internal political struggle or tried to
influence it or suppress opposition forces. This is not our business,”
he added.
Bordyuzha said that the CSTO, which is made up of Armenia, Belarus,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan, was created to counter
outside threats. “We have drawn conclusions from the Kyrgyz
events. And in my opinion the conclusions are that we should become
more active and assertive when we see the situation exacerbate in one
of the states,” ITAR-TASS quoted him as saying.
Bordyuzha also spoke against a hasty decision on the presence of US
military bases in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, ITAR-TASS said in a later
report on 27 July.
“Of course we need to be deciding on the time-frame for the bases’
presence and the expediency of using them, but I do not think this
needs to be done with undue haste and immediately,” Bordyuzha told
reporters. He said it was necessary to define the status of US bases
as “temporary bodies for the period of the active phase of the
antiterrorist operation in Afghanistan”. “As the situation stabilizes,
and it really is stabilizing, the issue of the bases’ withdrawal will
need to be considered,” ITAR-TASS quoted Bordyuzha as saying.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress