Д.Медведев.Пресс-конференция.05.09.08.Part 1

Press Conference following the Collective Security Treaty Organisation Summit.Part 1
September 5, 2008
The Kremlin, Moscow

Пресс-конференция по итогам заседания Совета коллективной безопасности ОДКБ.
5 сентября 2008 года
Москва, Кремль

DMITRY MEDVEDEV: The latest summit of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) has just ended. Naturally enough, perhaps most important of all today was the fact that this summit took place against a backdrop of the far from simple international situation that has emerged following the recent events in the Caucasus region.

I want to say straight away that one of this summits most important outcomes is that we have reached a consolidated position on this issue. Our partners in the CSTO have given a clearly negative assessment of Georgias action, Georgias aggression against South Ossetia, voiced their support for Russias active role and spoken in favour of solid security guarantees for South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The CSTO member states have called for an assessment of the situation free from double standards.

We had a very productive discussion at our meeting in narrow format, an absolutely honest open and direct discussion, as a result of which we have been able to demonstrate a new level of internal political coordination within the CSTO.

Russia has always supported diplomatic solutions to disputes, but if necessary we will take firm action in defending our interests this is the main lesson we have learned from these events in compliance with international law, of course.

I want to make it clear that we did not choose confrontation. This says it all.

Now, on the recognition of South Ossetias and Abkhazias independence, of course our partners in the CSTO will each decide for themselves what line to take, in accordance with the principles and provisions of international law and in consideration of their own national interests too, of course. Russia considers this absolutely correct.

We discussed many other important questions too. We reviewed the results of our work to maintain peace and stability in the CSTOs zone of responsibility, and we continued work on bolstering the organisations military component and building up its functional capabilities. We also set directions for future work, taking into consideration the security threats we face today.

The Declaration adopted today sets out our assessments and approaches regarding the most relevant international issues and confirms our common desire to build cooperation as allies on all issues of mutual interest.

We set out priorities for the organisations work over the second half of this year and the first half of next year. These priorities include important new steps to deepen military coalition building. We have, for example, made changes to the CSTO decision of May 25, 2001, on collective rapid reaction forces in the Central Asia collective security region and approved the regulation on procedures for drafting financing and implementing CSTO targeted inter-governmental programmes. These steps aim to give our military-technical cooperation greater substance and introduce modern and promising new working methods, which is something very important today.

We have also signed documents in the areas of counter-terrorism and preventing drugs trafficking. These are the collective action plan on forming a CSTO information security system, and a council decision, only just adopted, on additional measures to bolster anti-narcotics work within the CSTO.

Once again, I would like to say that the summits results confirm our common commitment to continue coordinated work to produce concrete results. The CSTO remains a guarantor of our countries territorial integrity and sovereignty, and non-intervention in their internal affairs.

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