Belarusian military to be sent to South Ossetia

• 27.08.2008, 10:41

Representatives of the member states of the Collective Security Treaty Organization are to take part in the mission of military observers of the OSCE in the zone of Georgian-South Ossetian conflict.

It has been informed by Secretary General of the CSTO Nikolay Bordyuzha on Wednesday.

“Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russian have already announced their interest in participation in the military observers’ mission. Participation of other countries, members of the Organization is possible,” N. Bordyuzha said.

The CSTO encourages the participation of its member-countries, because this will make the monitoring mission more objective and transparent, Bordyuzha says.

“Participation of our states in this mission is taking place in the framework of reinforcement of cooperation between the CSTO and other international structures of security”, he said.

The CSTO is a military and political union created by former Soviet republics basing on the CIS Collective Security Treaty (CST) which was signed on May 15, 1992. The treaty is automatically prolonged every 5 years. The current members of the CSTO are Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.