BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

14/06/2009

Post-Soviet security bloc to hold summit, but without Belarus

MOSCOW, June 14 (RIA Novosti) - A summit of the post-Soviet CSTO security bloc will go ahead in Moscow on Sunday as planned, despite Belarus's withdrawal in protest against Russia's ban on its dairy products, the Kremlin said.

The summit of the Collective Security Treaty Organization comprising Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan was preceded by a meeting of the CSTO Council of Foreign Ministers.

"Participation or non-participation in the CSTO summit is a sovereign affair of each state that joined the organization voluntarily. Moscow proceeds from the fact that the CSTO is an institution needed not only by Russia but equally by other CSTO member states," presidential aide Sergei Prikhodko said.

Earlier in June, Russia banned imports of over 1,000 types of dairy products from Belarus, dealing a major blow to its budget revenue, saying producers in the ex-Soviet republic had failed to comply with new Russian standards.

The country's Foreign Ministry reacted with a statement saying: "At this moment, we face open economic discrimination by one of the members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) against Belarus in an important category of products. Objectively, such actions undermine economic security, which is a fundamental basis for stability, and therefore for comprehensive and all-embracing security."

"In this situation, Belarus was forced to make a decision on cancelling its participation in the CSTO meeting in Moscow on June 14."

Source:

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20090614/155245455.html

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