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Uzbekistan rejoins defence pact

Vladimir Radyuhin

MOSCOW: Uzbekistan has rejoined the Russia-led defence pact, paving the way for the organisation to extend its reach beyond the borders of the former Soviet Union.

Uzbekistan on Friday became the seventh member of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), which also includes Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Belarus and Armenia.

"We were pleased to have been informed by Uzbekistan that it has lifted its moratorium on active work in CSTO," Russia's President Vladimir Putin said addressing a CSTO summit in Minsk, Belarus.

Uzbekistan, which co-founded the post-Soviet defence pact in 1992, suspended its membership in 1999 in an effort to re-orient its policy towards the U.S.

At the peak of the bonhomie in 2001 Uzbekistan hosted a U.S. military base on its territory for the anti-Taliban operations.

However, Uzbekistan turned back to Russia and shut down the U.S. base last year after Washington criticised President Islam Karimov's handling of an Islamist armed revolt in Uzbekistan' southern province of Andijan, and in the wake of U.S.-backed "coloured revolution" coups in several ex-Soviet states.

Vast region

With Uzbekistan reinstated in CSTO, the military bloc straddles a vast region from NATO in the West to China in the East, prompting comparisons with the Cold War-era Warsaw Pact.

Belarus President Alexander Lukashenka, who took over from Russia rotating chairmanship in CSTO, stressed that the main goal of the defence pact is to ensure the member-states security "in the Western direction."

"The main task of CSTO is to keep intact our Western borders," Mr. Lukashenka said on Friday after the biggest Russian-Belarus war-games since the break up of the Soviet Union timed to coincide with the CSTO summit in Minsk.

The expanded defence pact is also reported to be seeking to raise its profile and play a role outside its borders in Central Asia.

Uzbekistan shares a long border with Afghanistan and it was from Uzbek territory that the Soviet troops entered Afghanistan in 1979.

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