ITAR-TASS News Agency
TASS
December 1, 2004 Wednesday

Russian-Armenian commission meets in Moscow

By Suzanna Adamyants, Natalia Simorova

MOSCOW

Southern regions of Russia and the independent Caucasian states “need
full-scale and mutually advantageous integration in the interests of
the expansion of economic relations,” Chairman of the Federation
Council Sergei Mironov said on Wednesday at the opening of a regular
meeting of the Russian-Armenian cooperation commission, formed by the
upper chamber of the Russian parliament and the Armenian National
Assembly.

Russia and Armenia are “a sort of supporting pillars of a new stage
of the integration process,” Mironov continued. An intensive
political dialogue has been going on between Moscow and Yerevan over
the past several years.

“We have entered a period, in which regional integration plays an
important role. It depends a great deal on the development of a
political situation in Europe and on the American continent,” Mironov
said.

He stressed that “the work of the interparliamentary commission is
characterised by pragmatism and constructive approach to the problems
it tackles.” The unification of national legislations, which makes it
possible to settle legal, economic and administrative problems, is
its most important goal.

Vaan Ovanesyan, Armenian co-chairman of the interparliamentary
commission, pointed to a special importance of the consultations in
conditions of the worsening of the situation in the Caucasus.