CSTO To Present Plan To Reinforce Afghan-Tajik Border In November - Lavrov

The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) would present proposals on how to strengthen the Afghan-Tajik border to the heads of the CSTO member states at the Bishkek summit in November, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Wednesday

BISHKEK (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 22nd May, 2019) The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) would present proposals on how to strengthen the Afghan-Tajik border to the heads of the CSTO member states at the Bishkek summit in November, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Wednesday.

"[We pay] much attention to the tasks of the antiterrorist struggle, primarily from the point of view of the threats that come from the territory of Afghanistan. Additional proposals to strengthen the Afghan-Tajik border, mostly on increasing the ability of our Tajik allies to repel terrorist threats, have been adopted and will be reported to the leaders at the next summit in Bishkek in November," Lavrov told reporters after a meeting of the CSTO Council of Foreign Ministers.

Afghanistan has long been suffering from an unstable political, social and security situation due to simmering militant insurgency, including that of Taliban and the Islamic State terrorist group (IS, banned in Russia). Neighboring states, including Tajikistan, suffer spillovers from this instability in the form of cross-country drug trafficking and terrorist recruitment.

CSTO is an intergovernmental military alliance that was established in 1992 and now includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan as full members.