ASTANA, August 15 (Itar-Tass) — The Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) intends to work out new mechanisms to react to the situation in Afghanistan, CSTO Secretary-General Nikolai Bordyuzha said.
Speaking at a video conference on Monday, Bordyuzha said this issue became one of the priorities at the CSTO informal summit that had taken place in Astana on August 12-13.
“We discussed measures to fight extremist and terrorist organisations. It is not a secret that lately a great number of fundamentalist and extremist organisations have stepped up their activity in the Central Asian region. The instable situation in Afghanistan affects their work,” the CSTO secretary-general said.
In his words, “such situation in Afghanistan has fed these organisations. They have provided financial and ideological support.”
“Today the organisation has 34 structures that are recognised illegal by the CSTO. About dozens of them work very actively. And it is necessary to coordinate our efforts in this aspect,” Bordyuzha said.
He said during the summit, the presidents “instructed to discuss in detail tendencies for the development of the situation, its assessment and the changes after the withdrawal of the military contingent from Afghanistan”.
“On this basis proposals will be put forth to react to the possible aggravation of the situation,” Bordyuzha said. In his view, “measures should be taken to reinforce borders.” “There is a necessity to talk about steps towards coordinating the activity on all extremist groups, which are now deployed in Afghanistan, and on training camps, where many citizens from CIS countries underwent training. Then they are sent to the territory of their states for subversive goals,” he said.
The CSTO develops a system of measures to fight the cyber threat, Bordyuzha said.
“Cyber threats are a serious and major problem. No military contingents or groups of gunmen are needed to destabilize the situation in this or that state with the use of information technologies. And this is being done,” Bordyuzha stressed.
“Work on information counteraction is one of priorities in the activity of the CSTO,” he stressed.
“However, in reality, although we have been for a long time holding operations on security in cyber space, on fight against crime in the information environment, reveal quite a lot of sites that work against the state and are used to destabilize the situation, we have not arrived at a system-based approach to that work as of yet,” he added.
Bordyuzha said necessary proposals were being prepared in that sphere. “We hope in December to receive from high-level experts relevant recommendations” as to system-based work in that direction, he stressed.