YEREVAN, DECEMBER 6, ARMENPRESS. Official Yerevan denies the announcement of the President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko that the representative of Belarus will assume the post of the Secretary-General of the CSTO. Lukashenko told a Russian news outlet about this following the session of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council.

ARMENPRESS reports, citing Sputnik Armenia, Arman Yeghoyan, spokesperson of acting Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan, announced that the issue of the Secretary General of the CSTO is not solved yet.

“The issue of the appointment of the CSTO Secretary General is not solved yet. No CSTO session has taken place. The position of Armenia remains unchanged on this issue”, he said.

On December 5 Nikol Pashinyan had announced that the issue of the Secretary-General of the CSTO will be solved by consensus. “Armenia hasn’t addressed anyone with neither a request nor a proposal, we’ve said that we have our candidate in the CSTO, and we are coherently continuing to negotiate over the issue of our candidate. I have said numerously that the secretary general issue isn’t the most important one, a lot more serious issues are being discussed in this context, and the most important issue is the issue of the CSTO’s effectiveness and the mutual obligations of member countries of the organization, mechanisms of implementation of these obligations, the issue of member countries’ obligations before the countries of the organization. The secretary general’s status isn’t pivotal,” Pashinyan told reporters. Asked if he will demand explanations from Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, Pashinyan said he will definitely discuss the issues in the event of meeting him.

Edited and translated by Tigran Sirekanyan