MOSCOW. March 3 (Interfax-AVN) - Experts of the nations signatories to the Collective Security Treaty started a two-day meeting in Moscow on Monday under the chairmanship of Collective Security Council Secretary General Valery Nikolayenko.
The meeting's main goal is to complete the establishment of a new international military structure in the framework of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a competent source in the Collective Security Council administration told Interfax- Military News Agency on Monday. The structure entitled Unified Staff is being established in line with a decision of the council made in Moscow on May 14, 2002, he said.
"The two-day meeting of experts chaired by the secretary general of the Collective Security Council is planning to consider organizational and financial issues related to the activity of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, which is a new international regional organization. In particular, issues pertaining to the organizational and financial activity of the organization's Unified Staff will be finalized. The Unified Staff is to start operating in Moscow on January 1, 2004," the source said.
According to him, the meeting will involve a group of military coordinators representing the armed forces of the nations signatories to the treaty. The group's executive secretary, Lieutenant General Vasily Zavgorodniy, is to attend the meeting, too.
"After the elaboration of the interstate treaty is finished on the level of working groups of military experts, the Chiefs-of- Staff Committee, the Council of Foreign Ministers, and the Council of Defense Ministers of the Collective Security Council will hold meetings in Moscow in mid-March to consider the finalized documents related to the activity of the Collective Security Treaty Organization," the source said.
The Collective Security Treaty signed on May 15, 1992, brings together Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan.