Expert: Yuri Khachaturov appointment for the post of CSTO Secretary  will not affect the relations of member countries with Armenia. 

ArmInfo.Yuri Khachaturov's appointment   for the post of CSTO Secretary will not affect the relations of member countries with Armenia. Such an opinion was  stated by the Director of Institute for  Caucasus stated on April 16  at a press conference in  Yerevan.  

He thinks that the delay of this appointment was preconditioned  not  by negative approach of Belarus or Kazakhstan, but with  Russian-Belarusian conflict, which was solved with another bonus to  Minsk. " The relations in this entity are preconditioned  with more  serious issues and in real  the conflicts in this entity are not so  big as the indifference of partners to  other members' problems," the  expert states. 

According to him, this appointment should be estimated positively,  but it will never affect any approaches of Organization, particularly  in respect to Armenia. " One should not forget that it is a  rotation-based post and, after all,  it will be held  by another  member country," Iskandaryan summarized.  To remind, on April 14 the  CSTO member countries heads  have approved Yuri Khachaturov to the  post of the CSTO Secretary  General. 

To note, earlier it was decided to make the CSTO Secretary General's   mandate rotating - once every three years in the alphabetical order.   During the CSTO Collective Security Council's meeting in Yerevan on   14 Oct 2016, the participants were to name the Secretary General from   Armenia. However, on October 14, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan   said that the issue of the CSTO Secretary General was removed from  the agenda due to the absence of Kazakh President Nursultan   Nazarbayev. He added that the heads of the CSTO member states would   consider that issue at a meeting in St. Petersburg in Dec 2016.   However, this issue was not addressed in St. Petersburg either due to   the absence of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.