On October 14, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Armenia hosted the joint session of the Council of Foreign Ministers, the Council of Defense Ministers and the Committee of Security Council Secretaries of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) member-states, chaired by Edward Nalbandian, the Chairman of the CSTO Council of Foreign Ministers and Foreign Minister of Armenia.

The joint session started in a narrow format, and proceeded in an extended format with the participation of the delegations.

In his opening remarks Minister Nalbandian, particularly, mentioned, “Armenia has always had active and initiative involvement towards the improvement of cooperation within the Organisation, the facilitation of collaboration between the member-states, the development of mechanisms of foreign policy coordination, the promotion of cooperation in defence area and the enhancement of the Organization’s role in the international arena. In the course of our chairmanship in the Organization we continued the coherent steps towards the aforementioned directions.”

Minister Nalbandian presented the situation unfolded in the result of Azerbaijan’s aggression unleashed against Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) this April, agreements reached at the Vienna and Saint Petersburg summits on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, outlining that up until now Baku refuses to implement them.

Edward Nalbandian touched upon the crisis in Syria and the necessity to implement urgent steps towards the stabilisation of situation, the fight against international terrorism and migration crisis.

During the session a reference was made also to the situation in Afghanistan, highlighting the threat for the security in Central Asian countries deriving from the rise of terrorism in that country.

The joint session focused on the work of statutory bodies of the Organization, as well as on the intensification of cooperation between the CSTO member-states within different international formats, the timetable of 2016-2017 consultations on political, defence and security issues.

The joint ministerial session approved “The CSTO collective security strategy 2025”, the Final Statement of the Collective Security Council session, Statement on “The settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh issue”, Statement on the Antimissile Defense and other documents to be presented to the CSTO Collective Security Council, which will be held on the second half of October 14. In general, about three dozen documents were signed during the joint session.

By the end of the session the Chairmanship of the CSTO statutory bodies was passed to Belarus.