On March 28, Minister Vartan Oskanian participated in the regular meeting of the CIS Council of Foreign Ministers.

The key issues on the agenda were those regarding further development of multilateral cooperation among CIS member states, specifically in the humanitarian sphere, spheres of migration, information security, and anti-crime and anti-trafficking efforts.

The meeting approved plans for celebrating the 65th anniversary of World War II. The participants also approved the agenda of the meeting of the Council of Heads of States or Governments to be held on May 23, 2008, in Moscow. It was agreed that the next meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers will take place in Bishkek on September 25.

The same day, the Common Security Treaty Organization ministers also met. They discussed the mechanisms for greater correlation of foreign policy activities among its member states.

The Foreign Ministers discussed, in the scope of CSTO responsibility, the political and military developments, as well as cooperation between the UN, OSCE, and other regional organizations. An emphasis was made on the opposite stances adopted by the CSTO countries on some issues at international organizations. With regard to this, Minister Oskanian, in his speech, touched upon the passage of the UN resolution proposed by Azerbaijan. Specifically, he noted that the resolution has no legal force, the Azerbaijani side by proposing it pursues the aim of, firstly, rejecting the document that is on the negotiation table, and secondly, transferring the Nagorno Karabakh conflict resolution process from the Minsk Group to the United Nations, which will endanger the continuity of the process. In this respect, Armenia is concerned with the fact that the Organization was not able to develop a common stance on this issue. The Minister said that those having voted in favor of the aforementioned resolution in fact were voting against the peaceful conflict settlement process.

Armenia’s top diplomat concluded his speech expressing hope that from now on, the CSTO member states would respect the principle of solidarity.