Armenia likely to withdraw from collective security deal: PM

YEREVAN: Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said that a possible withdrawal from the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) is still on his country's agenda.

"I don't rule out that Armenia could make a decision on suspending or freezing its membership to the CSTO," if the Organization fails to fulfill its treaty obligations, Pashinyan said at a press conference in Yerevan.

Voicing his discontent over the CSTO's reluctance of dispatching a monitoring group to the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan, he said that the membership of CSTO has blocked his country's opportunities to promote military cooperation with other nations, reports Xinhua news agency.

The prime minister made the remarks days before his arranged talks with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in Moscow after Russia's mediation.

Azerbaijan and Armenia had been locked in a decades-long territorial conflict, with major armed clashes breaking out in September 2020 and ending with a Russia-brokered truce in November of the same year.

Sporadic conflicts have been erupting between Baku and Yerevan ever since, with international efforts still ongoing to mediate a fundamental truce between the two South Caucasus states.

The CSTO is an inter-governmental military alliance consisting of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan.