Valery Semerikov: CSTO has no distaste for NATO 

ArmInfo. The CSTO has no distaste for NATO, CSTO Deputy Secretary General Valery Semerikov said at today's roundtable in Yerevan. 

He said that there has never been any overt conflict between the two  structures. He noted that as early as in 2004 the CSTO Collective  Security Council took a decision to launch cooperation with NATO in a  series of dimensions. In this light, the CSTO sent a relevant letter  to the North Atlantic Alliance, but the letter received no response. 

"After that, several more attempts were made to launch cooperation,  but to no avail. As for the reason, it is necessary to ask NATO about  it," he said.  

At the same time, Semerikov noted that the CSTO is actively and  successfully cooperating with a number of international organizations  and that interaction with NATO would be positive in terms of  combating the present-day challenges and threats.    

For his part, Vladimir Nikishin, Head of the Information Programs  Division at the CSTO Secretariat, stressed that the CSTO has peaceful  goals, unlike NATO, which is a purely military organization.      

"The most important thing is that the CSTO Charter stresses that the  priority in achieving the Organization's goals is given to the  political and diplomatic means rather than to the use of force,"  Nikishin said.  

In this light, he pointed out that by ignoring the Warsaw agreement  and a number of other documents, including the ones on  non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, NATO keeps expanding and  approaching the borders of the CSTO member states. He thinks NATO's  activities are aimed at receiving unilateral military superiority.