MOSCOW, February 9. /TASS/. The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) has established contacts in the security sphere with a number of international structures, yet it is unable to establish interaction with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Pankin said at a conference entitled ‘Collective Security in a New Era: Experience and Prospects of the CSTO’ at the Valdai Discussion Club on Wednesday.

"[The CSTO] has positioned itself on the international stage. The organization has established ties with other global [structures] - the UN and a number of others involved in the security sphere, but [interaction] is not working out with NATO," he noted. "It is strange that an organization such as NATO does not recognize the CSTO if not as its equal, then as a significant player in the security sphere and thinks that the CSTO is a Russian organization where others simply exist," the diplomat added.

The senior diplomat did not rule out that his Western colleagues do not quite realize that the CSTO members have a "common collective responsibility for their security." "The threat to every one of us is persistent for a number of reasons: because of open borders, the absence of visas, and so on," he noted. "We are practically a single space in the economic sense in terms of movement of peoples, ideas, so a threat to one of us is a threat to the rest as well," the diplomat explained.

That said, the deputy foreign minister stressed that the CSTO does not include the Middle East, the Far East, the West or the North in its area of responsibility. "The area of responsibility is the CSTO’s own space while the area of responsibility of NATO and NATO allies - since NATO is also a retinue of allies and partners - is global simply because the US area of responsibility is declared as global. That is the difference," he concluded.