President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev believes that within the CSTO it is necessary to create a mechanism for sanctions for violation of the non-aggression agreement. He stated this at the end of last week at an informal meeting of the presidents of the CIS countries, held at the Borovoye resort near Astana. “We all spoke in the CIS about non-aggression, but the conflict unleashed by Georgia says that this does not work, because we do not have any sanctions, we do not have a collective response to such challenges - we must do this within the framework of the CSTO,” said Mr. Nazarbayev. “Kazakhstan is committed to the essence of this organization, and we must look and adjust the general position, say, the CSTO - if this is an organization of allies, this is one question. We generally need to define ourselves in these terms.” According to the Kazakh president, the CSTO is, of course, not the Warsaw Pact, which was a defense organization, “but still this organization must have some kind of armed forces, some kind of association that would respond to challenges.”

Nursultan Nazarbayev’s ideas were supported by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who also attended the summit in Borovoye. “I fully support your opinion that this should be an effective organization, a strong organization, whose members adhere to similar principles for development,” said Mr. Medvedev.

At the same time, no consolidated opinion was voiced regarding Nursultan Nazarbayev’s initiative, since, as Kommersant already wrote, the leaders of the two countries included in the organization, the Uzbek leader Islam Karimov and the President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko, did not come to the summit (about the reasons for the absence of Mr. Lukashenko, see article on this page). Meanwhile, issues directly related to Belarus were discussed in Borovoye. In particular, as Mr. Nazarbayev said, the Customs Union of three states - Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan - could be created by April next year. “As part of the creation of the Customs Union, 20 documents have already been endorsed, by March the remaining 12 will be endorsed, and by April we will be able to create the integration association itself, which is what we strived for,” said the Kazakh leader. Dmitry Medvedev, in turn, agreed that “there are very real prospects for finally putting an end to this long process and moving forward on a new basis.”

Nikolay Kommersant-Filchenko

Nursultan Nazarbayev wants sanctions