KYRGYZ PRESIDENT SAYS SHANGHAI GROUP, CIS SECURITY BLOC COMPLEMENT ONE ANOTHER
RIA Novosti, Moscow
5 Jul 07
Bishkek, 5 July: President Kurmanbek Bakiyev believes that the CSTO
[the CIS Collective Security Treaty Organization] and the SCO [Shanghai
Cooperation Organization] operating in the space of Central Asia do
not duplicate one another, but they naturally complement one another.
"Although the two organizations’ main aims differ slightly, the
SCO and the CSTO see their main tasks as being to ensure regional
security. The security issue, as is known, should always be considered
together with other tasks aimed at ensuring stability in regions,"
Bakiyev said in an interview RIA Novosti.
Given that almost one and the same countries are members of these
organizations, except for China in one case [China is not a member
of the CSTO] and Armenia and Belarus in another [Armenia and Belarus
are not members of the SCO], the number of population in the two
organizations [member states] almost total half of the world’s
population, the Kyrgyz president said.
He said the region’s overall potential created conditions more than
ample for the organizations’ member states to carry out mutually
beneficial cooperation with one another in all areas.
"I consider it to be quite natural that two international organizations
– the SCO and the CSTO – which have similar approaches to the fight
against terrorism are simultaneously engaged in creating a single
security space in the Central Asian region," the Kyrgyz leader said.
He also noted that the CSTO and the SCO attached "great significance
to the stabilization of the situation in Afghanistan in full and as
soon as possible, which continues to have negative effect on security
in our region".
Bakiyev believes that the two organizations will be able to have
serious effect on the post-war reconstruction in Afghanistan once
they work jointly.