The aggravation of the situation in the south of Armenia in connection with the establishment of a new border with Azerbaijan is a “border incident” and does not fall under the provisions of the CSTO charter on collective defense. Secretary General of the organization Stanislav Zas told journalists.
“You have to understand that the potential of the CSTO is used only in the event of an aggression, an attack [on one of the member countries]. Here we are dealing, in fact, with a border incident. Thank God, there are no casualties, there is no shooting there. This is a border incident, it must be solved, and we are in favor of solving it peacefully,” he said.
According to him, there is no escalation of the conflict. “Actually, we cannot speak about any escalation of the situation there. This is already good, this is already a result. There is a lot of work ahead on the border issue, the resolution of all these controversial issues, but they need to be resolved at the negotiating table” Zas pointed out.
The CSTO Secretary General also informed that after the May appeal of Armenia, the organization held consultations on the situation in the border regions of the country. “Such consultations were held at the level of defense ministers, secretaries of security councils, and I contacted both the Armenian foreign minister and the defense minister. We discussed this situation. In addition, we already had a general discussion of this situation during the Ministerial Council [Council of Ministers Foreign Affairs of the CSTO] in Dushanbe,” he said.
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Zas assured that the CSTO is constantly monitoring the situation in the south of Armenia. “The decision to form a monitoring group was not made, although, of course, the situation is being monitored,” the secretary general said. The organization receives the necessary information from many sources, including the Armenian side and Russian peacekeepers, Zas added.
The situation in border areas of Armenia’s Syunik and Gegharkunik provinces escalated after the Azerbaijani troops infringed into the sovereign territory of Armenia and tried to carry out engineering work,
