The Russia-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) is standing at a crossroads and Moscow is trying to transform the loose security alliance into a fully-fledged group.
The presidents of seven ex-Soviet states ended their second informal summit at a lakeside resort in Kyrgyzstan Friday after concluding discussions on cooperation within the organization, as well as joint combat against extremism and terrorism in the region.
Just as CSTO Secretary General Nikolai Bordyusha put it in April last year, the security grouping was going through a transformation from a military-political group into a multi-functional international organization.
Russia intensifies military cooperation with Kyrgyzstan
At the summit, Russia won an agreement to station more Russian troops in Kyrgyzstan as the Kremlin seeks more military influence in Central Asia.
The memorandum signed between Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and his Kyrgyz counterpart Kurmanbek Bakiyev said Kyrgyzstan had "approved a proposal by Russia to house an additional Russian military contingent in Kyrgyzstan."
It said the size of the contingent could be up to a battalion.
The two sides also agreed to hammer out details on Nov. 1 on the status of Russian bases in Kyrgyzstan, the memorandum said, adding the deal would last 49 years.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who travelled to Bishkek with Medvedev, said the new military training facility would be available to all members of the CSTO.
Analysts believe the strengthened military cooperation between Russia and Kyrgyzstan will have an overall impact on the inner interaction of the CSTO and the security situation in the region.
Collective security dominated by Russia
The CSTO is made up of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
The group was founded in October 2002 with the aim of improving their common military security. Signatories are not allowed to join other military alliances while aggression against one signatory would be perceived as an aggression against all the other members.
Russia has newly proposed setting up a rapid reaction force of the CSTO, which would be "just as good as comparable NATO forces."
Bordyusha said the group will also establish a unified intelligence reconnaissance system and work out a unified standard for training military personnel within the group.
The organization is widely considered as a Russia-led group to ward off westernization of its neighboring countries as both the United States and Russia jostle for military influence in the region.
The United States established an air base at the Manas international airport near Bishkek in late 2001 to support military operations in Afghanistan.
To weaken the U.S. influence, Russia granted Kyrgyzstan 2 billion U.S. dollars in loans and 0.15 billion dollars in aid this February. But the United States managed to keep the base, paying significantly higher rent.
Urgent demand for transformation
Though Russia dominates the CSTO, it sometimes finds it difficult to resolve the conflicts over territory, resources and ethnic-related issues among the member countries.
In addition, facing NATO's increasing infiltration into the region, the CSTO failed to show a unanimous stance, which called for an urgent need to transform the group from a political-military alliance into a multi-functional international organization.
In 1999, Uzbekistan withdrew from the CSTO and joined the pro-U.S. organization GUAM that was challenging the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in the region.
Russia did not regain Uzbekistan's trust until May 2005 when it strongly supported Uzbekistan in taking measures to suppress the riots in the country. Later Uzbekistan abandoned the GUAM and returned to the CSTO.
On the eve of the summits of the CSTO and the Eurasian Economic Community this February, President of Tajikistan Emomali Rakhmon had threatened to be absent from the gatherings due to the insufficient support it gained in tackling its energy crisis.
In June, Russia and Belarus had been locked in a so-called "milk war."
Moscow, a major consumer of Minsk's agricultural and industrial goods, banned more than 1,000 dairy products imported from Belarus in early June, dealing a heavy blow to the latter's foreign trade. The ban was later removed.
The short-lived controversial ban was triggered by Minsk's boycott of a summit of the CSTO in Moscow on June 14.
Minsk criticized the CSTO for the existing issues of the political-military security being divorced from the economic security of the member countries.
Actually Russia has noticed that a security cooperation without a economic basis is not solid.
Medvedev, in his two-day visit to Tajikistan before the summit, said the two countries would cooperate in energy and geological exploration to further consolidate the strategic partnership between them.
Analysts said the CSTO could grow and develop steadily on the international stage only when it attaches importance to its member countries' concerns in the social, economic and security sectors, cooperates with other international organizations and gains international reputation in fighting drugs and weapon smuggling, as well as the sharing of security information.
(Xinhua News Agency August 3, 2009)
