Agency WPS
What the Papers Say. Part B (Russia)
June 3, 2005, Friday

FROM BASE TO BASE

SOURCE: Vremya Novostei, June 3, 2005, p. 5

by Gajane Movsesjan

Colonel Seiran Shakhsuvarjan, spokesman for the Armenian Defense
Minister, said yesterday that the relocation of Russian weapons from
Georgia to Armenia does not require “any additional documents or
agreements.” The first echelon with Russian military hardware left
the Russian military base in Batumi for the Armenian town of Gyumri
on Tuesday, May 31. According to the spokesman, deployment of Russian
servicemen from Georgia in Armenia was not even discussed.

The plans to move military hardware to Armenia became public
knowledge even before this week, when Moscow and Tbilisi finally
reached an agreement on withdrawing the Russian military presence
from Georgia in 2008. The 102nd Military Base of the Russian Defense
Ministry has been stationed in Armenia since 1995. Needless to say,
official Baku (Azerbaijan) isn’t exactly enthusiastic about the
Kremlin’s intentions. Novruz Mamedov of the Azerbaijani presidential
administration said yesterday: “The relocation of military hardware
to Armenia, a country that still occupies some Azerbaijani land, will
not promote Azerbaijani-Russian relations.”

Russia is moving military hardware from one military base to another,
Russian Charge d’Affaires in Baku Pyotr Burdykin said in his
statement, released yesterday. “That does not mean we intend to turn
the military hardware over to Armenia.”

Armenian Defense Minister Serzh Sarkisjan says that “the increase of
the stocks of weapons” in the Russian military base promotes
interests of Armenia. All the same, not everybody in Armenia itself
shares this opinion. David Shakhnazarjan (envoy for Nagorno-Karabakh
settlement when Levon Ter-Petrosjan was the president) maintains that
the appearance of a new consignment of Russian weapons “will polarize
the region to an even greater extent.”

Georgia and Azerbaijan are en route into NATO, while Armenia is a
member of the CIS Collective Security Treaty Organization, from which
Georgia and Azerbaijan withdrew from in 1999. Moreover, Sarkisjan
himself confirmed the other day that NATO membership is not on
Armenia’s foreign policy agenda at this point.

Amajak Ovannisjan, president of the Association of Armenian Political
Scientists and a member of parliament, says that Russia may decide to
move some of the military hardware or personnel to the base in
Armenia, its only ally in the region and a member of the CIS
Collective Security Treaty Organization. “But Armenia may demand from
Russia better fulfillment of its obligations to the ally,” he said.
Ovannisjan maintains that Yerevan may demand changes in Russia’s
stance on the matter of Nagorno-Karabakh, which “Russia, as a legal
successor to the Soviet Union, should formulate bearing in mind its
historic responsibility for the fact that Karabakh was absorbed by
Soviet Azerbaijan against its will.”

Translated by A. Ignatkin