Armenian speaker criticizes Russian counterpart’s remarks on ties

Aravot, Yerevan
21 Dec 04

Text of report by Anna Israelyan in Armenian newspaper Aravot on 21
December headlined “Replying to Gryzlov”

Yesterday 20 December the chairman of the Armenian National Assembly
Artur Bagdasaryan expressed his negative attitude to Russian State
Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov’s statement that Armenia is Russia’s
outpost in the South Caucasus.

“Certainly, I treat this statement badly,” Mr Bagdasaryan said. “First,
the Republic of Armenia is a sovereign state and cannot be an outpost
of any state. Second, the Armenian-Russian relations develop naturally
and the statement of the Azerbaijani president that Azerbaijan
is confused and does not know whether the peace talks should be
conducted with the outpost or its master should be considered just
in this context. For instance, today there is not an Azerbaijani
delegation in the Council of Europe, there is a Turkish-Azerbaijani
delegation in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and
they jointly discuss and vote for all the issues,” Bagdasaryan added.

In fact, chairman of the National Assembly duplicated Armenian
President Robert Kocharyan, who replied to Azerbaijani President
Ilham Aliyev’s statement: “For instance, we are not concerned about
warm Turkish-Azerbaijani relations”. But is it worthy to compare
the Armenian-Russian and the Turkish-Azerbaijani relations?

Artur Bagdasaryan replied: “No, we do not have an ethnic problem here.
Everybody understands that Russian-Armenian cooperation, including
military and political ones, has deeper roots than cooperation of
Russia with other states of the region. The Turkish-Azerbaijani
relations are qualitatively higher than the Armenian-Russian
ones. Anyway, the Armenian-Russian relations are unique due to
the dynamic of their development, and the Azerbaijani president’s
statement should be also considered in this context because the finger
was pointed not only at Armenia, but Russia as well. For this reason
we should be able to strengthen our sovereignty”.

Incidentally, the chairman of the National Assembly also joked that we
may thank Gryzlov for saying this, emphasizing that the word “thanks”
should be in quotation marks.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress