Armenia aims at serious cooperation with NATO – president
By Tigran Liloyan
ITAR-TASS News Agency
September 14, 2004
YEREVAN, September 14 — Armenia aims at serious cooperation with
NATO, and “the scale of partnership may be broadened,” President
Robert Kocharyan told a delegation of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly
on Tuesday.
The delegation is visiting Armenia to attend a roundtable meeting at
the national parliament.
The president said he was satisfied with the current level of
cooperation with NATO, a source in the presidential press service told
Itar-Tass. He said Armenia is taking part in a number of NATO programs.
Kocharyan dwelt on regional cooperation, the Armenian Armed Forces
reform and Armenian peacekeepers in Kosovo by request of the
delegation.
Armenia is ready to develop relations with Turkey without any
preliminary conditions, Kocharyan said. Yerevan thinks that these
relations cannot be conditioned on Armenian relations with a third
country, he said implying the Turkish unwillingness to normalize
relations with Armenia as long as the latter supports Nagorno-Karabakh
in its conflict with Azerbaijan.
Regional cooperation can create favorable conditions for the settlement
of conflicts, Kocharyan said. He noted that Armenia had proposed the
formula of conflicts settlement through cooperation many times but
Azerbaijan rejected the proposal.