Pact to oppose `velvet revolutions` :: Charter'97 :: News

Russia and its ex-Soviet allies have decided to build up their joint defence capability to oppose West-sponsored "velvet revolutions."

Security issues

Security issues dominated a summit meeting of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), a post-Soviet defence pact, which groups Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Belarus and Armenia.

The CSTO pact "is giving special attention to devising effective joint measures to oppose political and religious extremism, as well as its extreme manifestation, international terrorism," the outgoing CSTO Chairman, President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan said after the one-day summit.

The summit ended in Moscow on Thursday, a day after parliamentary commission in Uzbekistan said a deadly revolt last month in the eastern Uzbek city of Andizhan had been planned and supported from abroad. Moscow also said it had evidence that the Taliban, as well as Uzbek and Chechen extremists had been involved in the Andizhan violence that claimed hundreds of lives. Speaking at the CSTO summit Russia`s President Vladimir Putin voiced concern that "terrorist-training bases continue to operate in Afghanistan, with direct involvement of certain secret services." He did not identify those secret services.

Sources said the leaders discussed setting up a second Russian military base in Kyrgyzstan, in the troubled Ferghana Valley, where the coup began that overthrew Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev in March.

Russia`s Security Council chief Igor Ivanov said CSTO focussed "on the creation of an effective military capability that could respond to potential challenges and threats to the member countries` national and collective security."