CSTO has potential to ensure stability in Central Asia.

NEW YORK, January 14 (Itar-Tass) - The Collective Security Treaty
Organization (CSTO) has all the necessary potential and levers to ensure
stability and thwart any attempts to destabilize the situation in Central
Asia, Eastern Europe and the Caucasus.
In an interview with Itar-Tass Nikolai Bordyuzha, the CSTO general
secretary, said that the CSTO had significantly increased its potential
over the past year. Apart from military units, the CSTO structure includes
various reaction forces.
"These forces are unique and have no world analogues. Apart from elite
military formations the Collective Rapid Reaction Force (KSOR) has special
units belonging to other agencies, such as the Interior Ministry, for
example, to fight organized crime," Bordyuzha, who is staying in New York
for participation in a UN Security Council meeting, said.
He added that the Collective Rapid Reaction Force also includes
security units which can carry out joint anti-terror operations and units
of the Ministries for Emergency Situations, which can jointly liquidate
the aftermaths of emergency situations.
"In fact, these are deterrence forces which demonstrate the abilities
of the CSTO to quite a few people," Bordyuzha went on to say. He added
that the CSTO was also creating a peacekeeping force. All CSTO member
countries, except Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, have ratified this agreement.
Despite the fact that the CSTO potential makes it possible to use
force if necessary, Bordyuzha said the CSTO member countries understood
that force was not a solution to all the problems.
"Therefore, the main task is to develop political cooperation and
anti-crisis measures," Bordyuzha emphasized. He expressed the hope that
the CSTO would be able to ensure stability and thwart any attempts to
destabilize the situation in Central Asia, Eastern Europe and the Caucasus.
"Today, we have all the necessary levers for that," Bordyuzha stressed.

.CSTO & NATO need to cooperate on Afghanistan-Bordyuzha.

NEW YORK, January 14 (Itar-Tass) -- The sooner NATO and the Collective
Security Treaty Organization begin cooperation and launch joint projects,
the more efficient they will be in safeguarding the security of countries
that have founded them.
"Apart from cautious remarks NATO is not taking any steps to establish
cooperation with the CSTO," Nikolai Bordyuzha, the general secretary of
the CSTO, said in an interview with Itar-Tass.
Bordyuzha recalled that not so long ago a NATO official had expressed
readiness to cooperate with the CSTO but said that NATO had to study it
potential and abilities first.
"We offered cooperation to NATO five years ago. Five years was enough
for NATO bureaucracy to understand whom they are offered to cooperate
with," Bordyuzha said. He described the remarks of NATO officials about
possible cooperation with CSTO as "subterfuge and child talk".
In the meantime, Bordyuzha said that the situation in Afghanistan had
proven that even a heavyweight like NATO was unable to do anything on its
own.
Bordyuzha said that the experience of 2001 were also rising to view
when a heavyweight like the United States with a colossal law enforcement
potential couldn't prevent head-on terrorist attacks on the main centre.
"Only after that they started talking of the need of active
cooperation in the struggle against terrorism," Bordyuzha noted. He
recalled that Russia's calls for cooperation had gone unheeded when
apartment buildings were being blown up in Moscow and Volgodonsk, when
Russian people were being killed in the Caucasus and when various
terrorist acts were being staged against Russia. He believes that a
similar situation has unfolded now.
"Is it necessary to fall into the same trap again in order to
understand that this cooperation is necessary?", the CSTO general
secretary puts rhetorical question.
Bordyuzha confirmed that the CSTO was interested in establishing
stability in Afghanistan. He said that a working group of national
coordinators had been set up on order from the presidents of the CSTO
member countries for a post-war conflict settlement in Afghanistan.
Bordyuzha explained that this group had developed a package of concrete
measures designed to help the Afghan leadership to ensure stability, form
the legislative basis, create law enforcement, train personnel and solve
some politico-military issues.
"Today, this plan is being implemented," Bordyuzha said. He expressed
the hope that the world community, NATO, the European Union and other
forces that were taking part in the post-conflict settlement in
Afghanistan would make it possible to ensure that stability.

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