ISTANBUL

The head of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) said on Monday that Yerevan has asked for the removal of the Russia-led alliance’s assistance to Armenia from its agenda.

“The Armenian side, although all other allies supported this decision, did not express any interest in this document and, moreover, in the final part of our work they asked to remove it from the agenda altogether,” Imangali Tasmagambetov said during a meeting with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in Minsk, according to a statement by the country’s presidency.

Tasmagambetov said that this matter is one of two matters the bloc could not address while implementing decisions made during the CSTO’s Collective Security Council meeting in November last year.

He went on to highlight international contacts with European international organizations such as the OSCE as being the other matter, which he said was not possible “due to their positions.”

Tasmagambetov and Lukashenko’s meeting came ahead of a CSTO Collective Security Council meeting set to take place in the Belarusian capital on Thursday.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's office announced that he would not be able to attend the CSTO summit in Belarus, later expressing in a parliamentary session that the alliance has not shown the necessary sensitivity to his country's security issues so they are “looking for other security partners.”