YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 20, ARMENPRESS. Acting Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan considers Russia’s position on the current situation over the election of new CSTO Secretary General as highly constructive, reports Armenpress.

“I consider Russia’s position in this story as highly constructive”, Pashinyan told reporters during today’s press conference in the government.

On November 2 Armenia’s Yuri Khachaturov was dismissed from the position of the CSTO Secretary General after Armenia applied to the CSTO member states to launch the process of recalling him as criminal case was filed against Khachaturov over the 2008 March 1 unrest in Yerevan. It was expected that the new CSTO Secretary General would be elected on November 8 during the CSTO Collective Security Council’s session, but a decision was made to solve the issue during the December 6 session. Thereafter, the President of Kazakhstan announced that the candidate of Belarus must be elected as new CSTO chief despite the fact that the right to hold this position belongs to Armenia until 2020. President of Belarus received the Azerbaijani Ambassador during which he introduced the latter on the details of the issues discussed during the CSTO Collective Security Council’s closed-door session. Following these developments Armenia’s acting PM Pashinyan announced that he will demand clarification from the Belarussian President for his step, as well as from the Kazakh President for making a statement contradicting the agreements.

Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan