MOSCOW, June 16, /ITAR-TASS/. The world is on the verge of open confrontation, Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) Secretary-General Nikolai Bordyuzha said.
“In our opinion, the world is on the brink of open confrontation,” he said at a meeting between State Duma (lower house of Russian parliament) speaker Sergei Naryshkin and the heads of CSTO parliamentary delegations to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on Monday, June 16.
“Some countries are not even camouflaging their actions and openly interfering in the internal affairs of states, trying to manipulate the public opinion and put economic and financial pressure on their authorities and the population,” Bordyuzha said.
“Well tested technologies of colour revolutions are used to change the political course of states and bring pro-Western puppet regimes to power,” he said. “The classic example of such revolution was the unconstitutional coup in Ukraine that led basically to a civil war.”
Apart from Ukraine, “challenges coming from Afghanistan, Middle and Near East countries that form a so-called arc of instability” remain a matter of real concern for the CSTO countries, Bordyuzha said.
“There also remains the risk of interstate conflicts due to problems in such fields as water and energy, transport isolation and unsettled borders,” he said, adding that CSTO member states are committed to pooling efforts in order to overcome problems caused by the current complex international situation.
“What made it peculiar was the strong political, economic and information pressure on Russia and other CSTO countries. Their strategic goals are practically not masked and call for further destabilisation in the post-Soviet region and disintegration of international collective institutions created here,” Bordyuzha said.
He noted “clear coordination and unconditional bloc discipline during the implementation by the West of collective political tasks which sometimes run counter to international relations. The notorious double standards and unceremonious manipulation of facts have become a common tool for forming the public opinion about global processes”.
Given the current situation, the CSTO foreign ministers have made the decision to suspend attempts to foster a dialogue with NATO and to continue cooperation with the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
“Priority will be given to the strengthening of cooperation with the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and with the People’s Republic of China on a bilateral basis,” Bordyuzha said.
He also called for further development of relations between the CSTO and Latin American and Caribbean countries, as well as Iran, “the influence of which in the region is indisputable, especially in the light of the Afghan factor”.