“As we understand, our partners in Uzbekistan need a time to study in depth the possibility of their participation in the collective rapid reaction force. Since Uzbekistan is a country that shares a common border with Afghanistan and has every reason to be a party to such agreements for repelling the terrorist threats coming from that country. We do hope that Uzbekistan’s decision to join in is a matter of time.

Nesterenko said Uzbekistan did not sign agreement on creation of the collective rapid reaction force and for that reason it is not involved in its implementation. He added Uzbekistan had been most active during the drafting phase.

It is pretty clear that the creation of a collective rapid reaction force is an intricate, complex process requiring quite a few political, financial, economic, administrative and technical solutions, Nesterenko said.

The decision to form the CSTO collective rapid reaction force was made at an early meeting of the CSTO Council on 4 February 2009 by the heads of state of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The agreement was inked at the CSTO summit in Moscow on 14 June 2009 by five participating countries. Belarus and Uzbekistan did not sign the agreement so far.