Dear colleagues,
Ladies and gentlemen,

It is an honour for us to host the session of the Council of Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the Collective Security Treaty Organization in Yerevan, with participation of the Foreign Ministers of the Organization’s member-states.

As you know, since last September Armenia has assumed the CSTO Chairmanship, and this Autumn, more precisely, in October, Armenia will host the session of the Collective Security Council. Hence during today’s meeting we discussed the preparatory works of the Summit of the Heads of the State and the draft documents to be submitted for their approval. And first of all, we focused on the CSTO Collective Security Strategy for the period until 2025, which will be presented at the upcoming Collective Security Council session for the adoption.

Today’s session of Ministerial Council created an opportunity to discuss the process of implementation of the arrangements reached on the level of the Heads of State, realization of the decisions made at the Collective Security Council sessions which were held in September and October of 2015, as well as the implementation of the priorities of the Armenian Chairmanship.

Armenia has always had an active and initiative involvement towards the improvement of cooperation within the Organization, intensification of its role in the international arena, facilitation of cooperation between the member-states, development of the mechanisms of coordination of foreign policy. Within the framework of our Chairmanship of the Organization, we continued our active steps in the abovementioned directions. We all shared the view that the improvement of the mechanisms of collaboration within the Organization, first of all, stems from the full implementation by the member-states of the commitments emanating from their membership.

The agenda of our session also focused on one of the main challenges the international community faces - the fight against terrorism and extremism.

During the meeting, the activity of the Organization’s statutory bodies was touched upon, intensification of the cooperation between the CSTO member-states within different international formats, regular updates of collective instructions to the Heads of the diplomatic missions of our countries abroad and to the international organizations, as well as the timetable of consultations on political, defence and security issues for 2016-2017 were reflected on.

The Council of Foreign Ministers approved a range of draft documents; statements on the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement and the Syrian crisis were adopted.

Thus, I will conclude and pass the floor to the CSTO Secretary General.