ITAR-TASS News Agency
TASS
June 9, 2005 Thursday

Armenia seeks individual partnership with NATO

By Tigran Liloyan

YEREVAN

Armenia will present to NATO headquarters a document to a plan of
individual partnership with the Western alliance.

Armenian Defence Minister and National Security Council Secretary
Serzh Sarkisian arrives in Brussels on Thursday.

He will hand in the document, on behalf of the Armenian president, to
NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.

Sarkisian will attend a meeting of the Council of Ministers of
Euro-Atlantic Partnership member states.

Armenian authorities say that joining NATO is not on the country’s
foreign policy agenda, but Armenia develops the relations with the
Western alliance within the framework of a partnership programme and
now of the individual partnership plan.

Contacts with NATO will be developed if they do not come to
contradict Armenia’s relations with the Collective Security Treaty
Organisation, Sarkisian said in a statement last year.

“Armenia realistically assesses the state of security in the regions,
and does not make premature statements, developing cooperation with
the North Atlantic alliance step by step. In this context, the
relations with NATO play a serious role in the system of the
republic’s security,” he said.