Collective Security Treaty Organization should build up military muscle - Belarus leader
MINSK. March 28 (Interfax) - Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has insisted that the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) strengthen its military component.
"We shouldn't be embarrassed to say that we have a military organization, and we will strengthen it in every way. I think this should be the motto for our planned informal meeting in Kyrgyzstan," Lukashenko said during a meeting in Minsk on Thursday with CSTO General Secretary Nikolai Bordyuzha.
"We are on the right road. I've just been to Southeast Asia, a remote and rather complicated region. When I was holding talks and meeting with officials, it caught my attention that everywhere everyone was saying proudly that they were forming alliances, at the moment, trade or economic ones," Lukashenko said.
"If there are shared interests, it won't be long before they have - politics naturally follows economics - to preventively defend their interests, by military means as well," he said. So, "the entire world is unifying in organizations of this kind, not only in the Southeast Asian region."
"When I was in the Persian Gulf region and met with officials there, I heard the same thing from them - that Gulf countries are reaching agreements, they have a common customs space, a single economic policy that is being evolved today," Lukashenko said.
"Bahrain has offered us an example of how Gulf countries can organize joint defense. When the situation aggravated, Saudi Arabia helped, and so did other countries," he said.
