Armenia 'only country authorized to head CSTO' until 2020

A senior representative of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) said Saturday that Armenia will remain the only member state vested with the power to head the intergovernmental body until January 1, 2020.

It comes after Colonel General Yuri Khachaturov, the Organization’s incumbent secretary general, was prosecuted earlier this week over charges of breaching the constitutional order in the period of the 2008 post-electoral protests in Yerevan (which ended in violent clashes with law enforcement officers, leaving at least eight people killed in Yerevan). Khachaturov served as the head of the Yerevan Garrison at the time.

“The authority of decision-making in such cases pertains to the Collective Security Treaty Organization’s Council. What the existing Council decision says is that secretary-generals are appointed from member states in alphabetical order based on the existing quota. So that authority is vested with Armenia until January 1, 2020. [The decision] is in effect and remains unchanged for Armenia,” Valery Semerikov, a deputy secretary-general of the Organization, told Tert.am.

The First Instance Court of Yerevan on Friday ruled to arrest Khachaturov, satisfying an earlier motion by the Special Investigative Service. But he was released on bail hours later after the required sum of 5 million Armenian Drams ($10,400) was paid, Khachaturov's lawyer said earlier today.

Khachaturov was appointed the secretary general of the intergovernmental military alliance involving six former Soviet republics (Russia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan) in May 2017. From April 2008 until October 2016, he served as the chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Armenia.