ARMENIA DOES NOT BELIEVE CIS IS ABOUT TO DISINTEGRATE
By Tigran Liloyan

ITAR-TASS News Agency
August 30, 2005 Tuesday

Armenia does not share the opinion that the Commonwealth of Independent
States (CIS) is about to disintegrate, Armenian Foreign Minister
Vartan Oskanyan told a news conference in Yerevan on Tuesday. He
takes a positive view of the meeting of the CIS summit in Kazan.

“At the Commonwealth summit in Kazan, the presidents confirmed their
adherence to the CIS, and their readiness to develop cooperation in the
existing frameworks and in the new ones,” the Armenian minister said.

“I cannot say that the CIS countries adhere to the common stand on
reforming the United Nations,” the minister acknowledged. “All of
them, however, share the view that the United Nations reform should
be comprehensive, should apply not to the Security Council alone and
should be accepted by the overwhelming majority of the member-states,”
the minister said.

“Armenia is for comprehensive reforms of the United Nations, which
should also envisage the broadening of the Security Council,” Oskanyan
said. In this context Yerevan “is for the increase of the number of
permanent and non-permanent members of the Security Council,” the
minister said. At the same time, it is recognized in Armenia that
“such important transformations can only be made given the consent
of the overwhelming majority of United Nations members.”