Armenia cooperates with NATO and Collective Security Treaty
By Tigran Liloyan

ITAR-TASS News Agency
April 19, 2005 Tuesday

YEREVAN, April 19 — Cooperation with NATO and with the Collective
Security Treaty Organization are parts of Armenia’s national security,”
Serzh Sarkisyan, the Armenian defence minister and secretary of the
National Security Council, said at the national press club on Tuesday.

The minister believes, “There are no contradictions in this, the
more so as many member countries of the Collective Security Treaty
Organization cooperate with NATO.” The aims and programmes envisaged
by the plan of Armenia’s individual partnership with NATO “do not
contradict the republic’s cooperation with member countries of the
Collective Security Treaty Organization”.

The plan of Armenia’s individual partnership with NATO has not yet
been endorsed, Sarkisyan said, and the document presenting it will,
most probably, be referred to NATO headquarters in late April.

Armenia, the defence minister said, “has partnerly relations with
Russia.” Relations with the United States are developing normally.
“Military cooperation with the United States is deepening, ” the
minister said. At the same time, he found it difficult to name new
trends in military cooperation with the US side, which are now limited
to “training and refresher training of specialists and perfecting
participation in peacekeeping operations.”

Means of communications manufactured by Harris firm supplied to the
Armenian army in the framework of the United States military aid have
already been adopted for service, Sarkisyan said.