The CSTO Committee of Secretaries of Security Councils discussed the challenges and threats to the security of the member states of the Organization and adopted a Statement on strengthening the fight against international terrorism

On November 17, 2020, a meeting of the Committee of Secretaries of Security Councils of the Collective Security Treaty Organization was held via videoconferencing. The event was chaired by the Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation Nikolai Patrushev. The CSSC meeting was attended by the secretaries of the Security Councils of the CSTO member states and the Secretary General of the Organization Stanislav Zas.

The Chairman of the CSTO CSSC, the Secretary of the Russian Security Council, opening the meeting said that one of the fraught challenges was the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. “The rapid spread of the coronavirus has changed the way of life almost all over the world. The global political and economic system is being tested for stability. At the same time, we can already say with confidence that our states are coping with this difficult period with dignity,” he said.

Nikolai Patrushev said that in order to overcome the consequences of the pandemic, it was important to exchange relevant information, provide the necessary assistance to each other, including by supplying tests, medicines, personal protective equipment, developing and testing vaccines, as well as consulting on providing medical assistance to citizens of the CSTO member states.

“We will have to comprehensively analyze the consequences of the pandemic, develop collective approaches to interaction within the CSTO in the field of biological security,” the Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation stressed.

The CSTO Secretary General, assessing the military-political situation in the world, said that it remained difficult, and the level of its tension, including in the area of ​​responsibility of the Organization and close proximity to it, had significantly increased over the past year. “Today the need for consolidation of international efforts to overcome confrontation and reduce existing threats is becoming more and more obvious. This is especially important in conditions when the main geopolitical agreements are being dismantled, which have ensured the balance of forces and stability in the world for many years,” Stanislav Zas said.

In the course of the meeting, the CSSC members discussed in detail the challenges and threats to the security of the CSTO member states in the East European, Caucasian and Central Asian regions of collective security.

Following the meeting, the Statement by the Secretaries of the Security Councils of the member states of the Collective Security Treaty Organization on strengthening cooperation and coordinating efforts to combat international terrorism, the spread of terrorist and related extremist ideology was adopted. In the document, the secretaries of the Security Councils draw the attention of the world community to the need to unite efforts in countering terrorism within the framework of a broad international anti-terrorist coalition based on fundamental norms and principles of international law, on the basis of strict adherence to the UN Charter and the implementation of relevant UN Security Council resolutions.

“We consider the practice of using terrorist and related extremist organizations by states as tools to realize their own political and geopolitical goals to be unacceptable, and the practice of using by such organizations of international platforms to promote their ideology to be inadmissible,” the statement says.

At the CSSC meeting, the information of the State Secretary - Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of Russia Igor Zubov was heard on the results of the activities of the Coordination Council of the heads of the competent authorities to combat drug trafficking of the CSTO member states, as well as the Anti-Drug Strategy of the CSTO member states for 2021-2025, which will be submitted for consideration by the CSTO Collective Security Council on December 2, this year. The implementation of the strategy will allow to quickly respond to changes in the drug situation on the territory of the CSTO member states, reduce the scale of illegal trafficking in controlled psychoactive substances, as well as their non-medical consumption. The draft document was developed by the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia in cooperation with the competent authorities of the CSTO member states in the implementation of the Plan for the implementation of the CSTO Collective Security Strategy for the period until 2025 and the priorities of the Russian Federation during the presidency of the CSTO.

The CSTO members approved the Plan for joint training of command and control bodies and formations of assets of the CSTO collective security system for 2021 and the Plan of consultations of representatives of the CSTO member states on foreign policy, security and defense for the second half of 2020 - the first half of 2021.

Also, the secretaries of the Security Councils of the CSTO member states approved a number of draft decisions of the CSTO CSC, which relate to military and military-technical cooperation, improving the training of the Peacekeeping Forces, as well as personnel for the state authorities of the CSTO member states.

Summing up the results of the meeting, Chairman of the CSTO CSSC Nikolai Patrushev said that the secretaries of the Security Councils spoke in favor of expanding cooperation to prevent the infiltration of foreign terrorist fighters into the territory of the CSTO states. “To this end, we have developed additional measures aimed at increasing the efficiency of interaction between the competent authorities in the anti-terrorist sector,” the Secretary of the Russian Security Council noted.

He emphasized the need for rehabilitation, reintegration and resocialization of citizens who have become victims of terrorist ideology. In the course of the meeting, the CSSC announced its readiness for further constructive cooperation in the fight against terrorism with international organizations, as well as other states on a bilateral and multilateral basis.

According to Nikolai Patrushev, the secretaries of Security Councils paid special attention to information security issues. “We agreed to continue the practice of conducting military trainings, in the course of which new forms and methods of using the Collective Forces will be tested. We stated that the created collective forces today have sufficient potential to solve the tasks assigned to them. At the same time, plans were discussed for their further equipping with modern weapons and military equipment, control and communication systems. We analyzed the prospects of the CSTO peacekeeping activities with an emphasis on the possibility of the CSTO forces participating in peacekeeping operations under the auspices of the UN,” N. Patrushev said.

He expressed the opinion that during the Russian presidency of the CSTO, it was possible to achieve the tasks set by the heads of the CSTO member states for the current year, despite the difficulties associated with the difficult epidemiological situation, as well as the degradation of the military-political situation in the world and bordering with the CSTO area of responsibility regions.

At the end of the meeting, a protocol decision was made to hold the next meeting of the CSTO Committee of Secretaries of Security Councils in the first half of 2021 in the city of Dushanbe.

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The CSTO Press Secretary                                         Vladimir Zaynetdinov

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