President receives CSTO Secretary-General Nikolay Bordyuzha

President Serzh Sargsyan today received the Secretary-General of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) Nikolay Bordyuzha who has arrived in the Republic of Armenia on a working visit.

The Armenian President welcomed the visit of the CSTO Secretary-General which is purposeful and pertains to the growing tensions at the borders of the CSTO member states in the recent period, including the drastic aggravation of the situation along the Armenian-Azeri and the Nagorno-Karabakh-Azeri line of contact in August this year. He noted that unfortunately, Azeri provocative actions in every possible way pose a threat to the fragile security system of the area under the CSTO responsibility. By permanently violating the ceasefire regime, Azerbaijan hampers the efforts of the OSCE Minks Group aimed at peaceful resolution of the conflict.

The president underscored that the positions of a number of CSTO partners on issues being of paramount importance to allies, particularly on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, expressed in different international platforms, do not correspond to the common spirit of the negotiation process, contradict the statements and proposals of the OSCE Minsk Group, as well as to the documents endorsed within the framework of the CSTO. Ilham Aliyev’s bellicose and Armenophobic statements do not rouse a keen response among our CSTO partners which could have suppressed the adventurous desires of the Azeri leadership.

According to the president, in the end Azerbaijan continues to aggravate tensions and initiate provocative actions rudely violating his commitment to peaceful resolution of the conflict and the norms of international humanitarian law. This was plainly testified by the murder of Karen Petrosyan who had been taken prisoner by the Azeri side.

Nikolay Bordyuzha noted that ahead of the preparation of the upcoming session of the CSTO Council he is now studying the most acute security problems that the CSTO member states face. According to him, there are a few of them, including the situation pertaining to the mentioned heightened tensions in summer. Referring to the meetings held by the President of the CSTO Council Vladimir Putin in connection with those events, Nikolay Bordyuzha expressed the opinion that it is necessary to report and to discuss all those issues which can seriously affect the security of the CSTO member states at the upcoming session of the CSTO Council.