I Have Honor alliance leader: Armenia breaks ties with CSTO having no other security guarantees
“To contain Azerbaijan, you need military presence,” Mamijanyan said.br /
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YEREVAN, June 14. /ARKA/. Armenia breaks ties with the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a Russian-led military alliance, without having any other security guarantees, leader of the opposition I Have Honor parliamentary alliance Hayk Mamijanyan said on Friday.
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Mamijanyan admitted that Armenia’s security system has major issues.
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“Most of such issues, however, are caused by the idiocy of Armenian officials. A good example is the decision to arrest a CSTO General Secretary. If any NATO country arrested [Jens] Stoltenberg, imagine what would happen?” Mamijanyan said in the parliament.
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“There are issues and there will be issues. But those need to be solved, and we shouldn’t break ties without any guarantees, leaving Armenia on its own. By the way, the closest NATO [base] to Armenia is in Incirlik, in Turkey,” he said.
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The deputy also noted that Azerbaijan is not a country that can be contained with political statements. “To contain them, you need military presence,” he said.
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The CSTO General Secretary Yuri Khachaturov, formerly Chief of the General Staff of Armenia’s Armed Forces,nbsp; was arrested shortly after the 2018 Velvet Revolution and charged with “overthrowing the constitutional order in connection with his actions as commander of the Yerevan garrison during the events of March 1-2, 2008, when opposition protests led by Levon Ter-Petrosyan were suppressed by police and military forces, resulting in several deaths. He was later released as per order of the Constitutional Court of Armenia.
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Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said in the parliament on Thursday that the country might formally leave the CSTO. He also said that neither he nor any other Armenian official would visit Belarus, another CSTO member country, while Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarusian president, is in office, virtually accusing Minsk of aiding Baku in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War.
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