ArmInfo. There are no news on the change of the CSTO Secretary General Yuri Khachaturov at the moment. The press secretary of the Armenian Foreign Ministry Anna Naghdalyan said this on October 24 at a briefing.
According to her, discussions continue. They are aimed at reaching a consensus decision. As the press secretary recalled, the current order does not provide for a change of the Secretary General and it is necessary to develop such a procedure.
As for the transfer of the CSTO PA meeting from Yerevan to Moscow, then, as the representative of the Armenian Foreign Ministry pointed out, the decision was purely technical in nature, which was due to internal political events in Armenia. "There was no other reason," she said.
Earlier, on October 18, Armenian Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanyan stated in an interview with journalists that the issue of recalling CSTO Secretary General Yuri Khachaturov should be considered in a broader context, given the likelihood of similar problems recurring in the future. Answering the question of how correctly from a diplomatic point of view it was to initiate a criminal case against the CSTO Secretary General, Mnatsakanyan said that the issue with Khachaturov is strictly domestic. "Armenia, for its part, has done everything so that the internal political process does not influence the Organization and the authority of the CSTO is as important for us as it is for other member countries," he said. Referring to the postponement of the meeting of the CSTO Parliamentary Assembly, he called consider the issue from a pragmatic point of view and not see in it "nothing supernatural and anti-Armenian".
Earlier, the head of the State Duma Committee on CIS Affairs, Leonid Kalashnikov, told reporters that the meeting of the CSTO Parliamentary Assembly at the end of October will be transferred from Yerevan to Moscow because of early elections to the Armenian parliament to be held in December.