As chief of the Political Cooperation Department of the SCTO Secretariat Viktor Sytkin told ITAR-TASS, “the aim of the consultations is to exchange information on the pace of preparations for the third session of the Preparatory Committee of the 2010 Review Conference which will consider effects of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NNPT).

According to Sytkin, the meeting will also discuss issues of interaction of the CSTO countries to reveal and stop WMD illegal trafficking, means of its delivery and materials related to them.

CSTO includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

NNPT was approved by the UN General Assembly in June 1968 and signed in Moscow, Washington and London on 12 July 1968. It came into force on 5 March 1970.

On 11 March 1995, more than 170 member-countries agreed to indefinitely prolong its validity without any additional conditions. Almost all independent states of the world, except Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea, are its participants. The state which produced and exploded a nuclear weapon or a device before 1 January 1967 (the USSR, the United States, Great Britain, France and China) is considered to be a nuclear state.