YEREVAN. – Defense Minister Davit Tonoyan ruled out that the matter with respect to the next Secretary General of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) can be resolved without Armenia’s consent.

Tonoyan on Tuesday was asked by reporters at Yerablur Military Pantheon in capital city Yerevan whether he considered possible that the next CSTO chief could to be appointed without the consent of Armenia.

“I rule out that possibility,” Tonoyan said. “It’s the appointment of the [CSTO] Secretary General. It’s not a matter of making a decision at the tactical, or the operative tactical chain. This is a matter of the election of the Secretary General of the strategic alliance. How can a secretary general be elected without one member of the alliance? The [CSTO] regulation doesn’t permit such a thing. The regulation permits something else, but not in connection with the election of the Secretary General.”

And when asked what Armenia’s position on this matter was, the defense minister responded as follows: “At this moment, the MFA is carrying out relevant work at the CSTO, the CSTO Secretariat is carrying out relevant work, [and] the Defense Ministry has expressed its view.”

The office of the CSTO Secretary General has remained vacant ever since the year past, when Armenia’s representative Yuri Khachaturov was dismissed from this position due to criminal proceedings against him in Armenia.

CSTO Deputy Secretary General Valery Semerikov has been appointed Acting Secretary General of this organization. 

Armenia argues that another of its representative must assume the CSTO Secretary General’s post until 2020, when the country’s term in this office formally comes to an end.

But as Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev had earlier stated, during the CSTO leaders’ summit that was convened last November in the Kazakh capital city of Astana, it was decided that Belarus’ representative—state secretary Stanislav Zas of the Security Council of Belarus—shall be appointed as the next Secretary General of the Collective Security Treaty Organization.