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Russia-led security bloc to set up crisis response center in Moscow

Collective Security Treaty Organization's spokesman said that the new center would be based at an information technology complex for software and hardware development

© EPA/TATYANA ZENKOVICH

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MOSCOW, June 26. /TASS/. Senior ministry and agency officials of the Russia-led military alliance of former Soviet states CSTO on Friday discussed plans to establish a crisis response center to help member states deal with major security threats, a spokesman for the organisation said on Friday.

"Experts from CSTO ministries and agencies concerned discussed approaches to establishing the crisis response center and considered relevant draft statutes and regulations for information exchange," the Collective Security Treaty Organization's spokesman, Vladimir Zainetdinov, told TASS after discussions at the CSTO Secretariat.

He said that the new center would be based at an information technology complex for software and hardware development, which is currently being equipped in one of the Russian Defense Ministry’s military towns in Moscow.

Plans to set up the center were announced at a meeting of the organisation’s decision-making body, the Collective Security Council, in January.

CSTO Secretary-General Nikolay Bordyuzha said the center was expected to coordinate with Russia’s new National Defense Control Center, aimed at integrating the leadership and direction of defense and security structures in real time. The center would be part of the CSTO Secretariat and would coordinate work with the Joint Staff in an effort to make the crisis response system work in all member states of the alliance.

The CSTO, established in 1992, is headquartered in Moscow and comprised of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan. In 2002, the six post-Soviet states agreed to create the CSTO as a military alliance.

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