ARMENIA, GREECE DISCUSS CLOSER MILITARY TIES
By Ruzanna Stepanian

Armenialiberty.org, Armenia
Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
Oct 5 2005

Greece’s Defense Minister Spilios Spiliotopoulos pledged on Tuesday
to boost long-running Greek military assistance to Armenia which
Armenian leaders said stems from “common strategic interests” of the
two nations.

“The Greek people and the Greek Defense Ministry always stand by the
Armenian people and are ready to help them on any issue,” he told
reporters at the end of an official visit to Yerevan.

Spiliotopoulos gave few details of his meetings with President Robert
Kocharian, Prime Minister Andranik Markarian and Defense Minister
Serzh Sarkisian, saying only that they touched upon Greek-Armenian
military ties both within the bilateral and NATO frameworks.

Spiliotopoulos was reported to tell Kocharian that Greece is ready
to “continue and reinforce” its military cooperation with Armenia,
which includes “material assistance” to the Armenian armed forces. The
presidential press service also cited him as promising to assist in
Yerevan’s growing involvement in NATO’s Partnership for Peace program.

“Greece is a friend and partner of Armenia,” Kocharian said, according
to his office.

The praise was echoed by Markarian. “Andranik Markarian and Spilios
Spiliotopoulos stressed that Greece’s and Armenia’s interests in the
region converge because they are based on common approaches to the
existing problems and the realization of the need to maintain its
stability and military-political balance,” read a statement by the
Armenian government’s press service.

“They noted that the expansion and development of the ongoing military
cooperation between the two countries in the military-technical,
military-educational, military-information and other fields will
enable our countries to protect their common strategic interests in
a more effective manner,” the statement said.

The two Christian nations share a long history of troubled relations
with their common Muslim neighbor, Turkey. That might explain why
Greece is Armenia’s closest NATO partner, having provided its military
with non-combat equipment and trained scores of Armenian officers.

Greece’s financial and technical aid was also instrumental in the
creation in 2001 of a special peace-keeping battalion of the Armenian
army which has contributed troops to NATO’s peace-keeping mission in
Kosovo and the U.S.-led occupation force in Iraq. Incidentally, the
Armenian soldiers serve in Kosovo as part of a Greek battalion. Their
track record was praised by Spiliotopoulos.

Officials in Yerevan said the Armenian military plans to substantially
increase the size of its peace-keeping detachment and counts on Greek
assistance to the effort.