PATRIOT PARK /Moscow Region/, August 15. /TASS/. Belarus views the CSTO, the CIS, the SCO and BRICS as alternative mechanisms of ensuring security, Belarusian Defense Minister Viktor Khrenin asserted at the 11th Moscow Conference on International Security.
"One shouldn’t be surprised as to why the Republic of Belarus is an active participant of integration processes with the framework of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), aspires to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and BRICS. We simply see these organizations as alternative mechanisms of ensuring security by uniting peoples," the defense minister said.
According to him, "integration attempts are ruining the West’s plans." "It is no accident that attempts are being made to sow discord within unions of states, to tear countries apart, to draw them into the Western neocolonial behavior model," Khrenin said.
He stressed that within the framework of such aspirations, the allies are being offered various alternative cooperation formats and economic and financial incentives. "I will not repeat myself how dangerous it is to disrupt the unity in the CIS, CSTO, SCO formats in the long-term perspective," the Belarusian Defense Minister said. According to him, the global situation being shaped leaves no doubt that it is necessary to stick together, and only those countries that retain unity will be able to emerge from the difficult period of establishing a world order with the least upheavals. "This is precisely why we are more often talking about the necessity to expand integration," Khrenin asserted.