MOSCOW, November 9. /TASS/. Yerevan is again making attempts to shift responsibility for the decisions that it makes onto member countries of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Pankin told TASS in an interview.
Even as Armenia has frozen its CSTO membership and has not been paying fees, it remains a full-fledged member of the organization, he noted.
"We are not leaving Yerevan out of our cooperation as we continue to offer our partners the opportunity to join in decision-making within the framework of this association--a step that would, ultimately, be entirely in their own best interests. Unfortunately, we see no reciprocal effort from the Armenian side," the senior Russian diplomat lamented. "Rather, it is the other way round - new attempts are being made to shift the responsibility for the decisions that they make onto others," he argued.
Pankin recalled that "in line with provisions of the CSTO Charter, a member country may be deprived of its voting rights until it has paid off its outstanding fees in full."
Commenting on expectations from a CSTO summit scheduled to take place in Moscow on November 11, he noted that the...