ITAR-TASS News Agency
TASS
July 6, 2004 Tuesday 3:38 PM Eastern Time

Interaction with Armenia among Russia foreign policy priorities

By Svetlana Alexandrova, Alexandra Urusova

MOSCOW

The latest meeting of the Minsk group of the Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) for the settlement of the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict showed that the sides are ready to look for
the solution to this long-standing problem, Russian Foreign Minister
Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday following the talks with his Armenian
counterpart Vardan Oskanyan.

The Russian minister pointed to the “coincidence of the positions of
the two countries virtually on all the questions of the bilateral and
international agenda”.

He stressed that interaction with Armenia “is a priority trend in
Russian foreign policy”. “This is fully manifested in such areas as
cooperation in investment, trade and economic partnership and the
political dialogue”.

He said the recently formed Russo-Armenian business council
contributed much to the development of relations. Lavrov said
cooperation between the two countries within the framework of the
CIS, United Nations and the Council of Europe was discussed at the
meeting.

In his turn, Vardan Oskanyan expressed satisfaction with the results
of the talks with Sergei Lavrov. “I am sure that our political
dialogue will be continued, especially now that many interesting
events take place in our region”, he said.