By BBC Monitoring
The Russia-led CSTO (Collective Security Treaty Organisation) military alliance appears to have blocked Armenian attempts to appoint another chairman after the country’s previous occupant of the rotating post was dismissed.
Russian business daily RBC said on 8 November that Armenia had hoped the alliance would appoint another representative of the country as its next secretary-general after Yerevan recalled Yuri Khachaturov in a move that angered Moscow. The country’s 3-year rotating chairmanship is due to run out at the end of 2019.
“Of course Armenia wants an extension. All the heads of state have said that there is only one year left [in Armenia’s term] and he [a new Armenian secretary-general] will not manage to visit all these countries. Therefore we need the next secretary-general to be a proper active one, from Belarus… According to our charter, in alphabetical order the next after Armenia is Belarus,” Kazakhstani President Nursultan Nazarbayev said at a summit of the bloc in Astana, Interfax news agency reported on 8 November.
Following Khachaturov’s dismissal, his deputy, Russia’s Valery Semerikov, was appointed as the bloc’s acting secretary-general.
“A significant amount of time has been set aside for the issue of choosing a new CSTO secretary-general. The heads of state have agreed to make a final decision on the matter in St Petersburg on 6 December,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, as quoted by Interfax on 8 October.
Another CSTO summit is expected to take place in St Petersburg on that date, Peskov confirmed.
In July, Armenia called for Khachaturov to be removed from the CSTO post after he was charged with “overthrowing the constitutional order” in connection with the violent suppression of mass protests against the outcome of the 2008 presidential election.
Official results handed victory to the then President, Serzh Sargsyan, but prompted allegations of vote-rigging from the opposition. At the time, Khachaturov was a commander of the Yerevan military garrison.
In August, influential business paper Kommersant suggested that Armenia’s decision to open court proceedings against Khachaturov had caused Russian authorities “particular irritation”.
The CSTO includes Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan.