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Georgian war boosted terrorism, head of "Russian NATO" says
Mar 11, 2009, 16:28 GMT
Brussels - August's war between Russia and Georgia boosted terrorists across the former Soviet Union, the head of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) said Wednesday.
'As a result of the conflict, we noticed a definite increase in terrorist acts in Central Asia, Russia and the East,' Nikolai Bordyuzha, secretary general of the CSTO, told journalists in Brussels.
The terrorists 'saw it as a good moment to take up action ... and tried to use the situation to reach their political goals,' he said after talks with the ambassadors of CSTO member states at NATO's headquarters in Brussels.
The CSTO is a group of seven countries - Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Armenia and Uzbekistan - who have pledged to jointly defend one another's security. Dominated by Russia, it is sometimes referred to as the 'Russian NATO.'
The organization's priorities are to ensure its members' security and fight terrorism, drug trafficking and illegal migration. It is willing to work with NATO on those issues, Bordyuzha said.
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