The Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) must help Armenia win back its territory occupied by Azerbaijan during recent border clashes, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said on Wednesday.
Pashinian announced that he is planning to initiate an emergency summit of the leaders of the CSTO member states for that purpose.
Armenia appealed to the military alliance of Russia and five other ex-Soviet republics for military aid on September 13 just hours after Azerbaijani forces attacked many of its positions along the Armenian-Azerbaijani border. The other CSTO member states effectively declined the request, deciding instead to send to fact-finding missions tasked with studying the situation on the ground. They reportedly submitted policy recommendations later in September.
“We are going to initiate an extraordinary session of the Collective Security Council in order to discuss that report,” Pashinian told the Armenian parliament. “I hope that the session will take place as soon as possible.”
He said Yerevan expects the CSTO to condemn the September 13-14 hostilities as Azerbaijani military aggression against its member state and come up with a “roadmap for restoring Armenia’s territorial integrity.”
Armenian officials have criticized the CSTO and Russia for their reluctance to openly side with Armenia.
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told his Armenian counterpart Ararat Mirzoyan on October 12 that the CSTO is ready to send monitors to Armenia’s border with Azerbaijan. In a thinly veiled rebuke to Yerevan, Lavrov said that the CSTO secretariat in Moscow proposed such a deployment about a month ago but that Armenia, the current holder of the alliance’s rotating presidency, has still not organized a summit needed for its approval.
Source: Azatutyun.am
