The United Nations and the Collective Security Treaty Organization have agreed to cooperate in fighting terrorism and transnational crime. A document to that effect will be signed by the UN and CSTO secretary generals Ban Ki-moon and Nikolai Bordyuzha at their meeting in Moscow on Thursday.
The CSTO was set up in 1992 and comprises seven post-Soviet states - Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The UN's readiness to cooperate with the CSTO is evidence of international recognition of its role in promoting regional and global security. Analyst Dmitry Yevstafyev gives his view:
"We are actually witnessing the geopolitical legalization of the CSTO. This is important because despite its problems, the United Nations remains the central body in the system of international law. But one shouldn't be euphoric. The CSTO is relatively a young military-political organization and has little experience".
A crackdown on Afghan drug trafficking is supposed to grab the UN-CSTO's attention. In the opinion of Russia's Ambassador to NATO Dmitry Rogozin, promoting stability in Afghanistan may set the stage for future cooperation between the CSTO and NATO under the UN auspices.
Vitaly Churkin, Russia's Permanent Representative to the UN, hailed the practical and political significance of the UN-CSTO declaration. The document lays legal foundations for the CSTO's involvement in UN peacekeeping operations and provides for the creation of CSTO peacekeeping forces to be trained according to UN programs, taking part in international peacekeeping exercises and sharing weapons and communications means with other UN troops or equipped with compatible analogues.
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