Armenian minister invites Azerbaijan to economic competition
Arminfo
16 Mar 06
Yerevan, 16 March: Boasting about a military budget does not anyone
credit, Armenian Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanyan has said in an
interview with Yerevan H2 TV. Oskanyan was commenting on Azerbaijani
President Ilham Aliyev’s statement about plans to make his country’s
expenditure equal Armenia’s entire budget.
Aliyev makes such statements quite often and one can form an impression
that the Azerbaijani state budget increases every day, Oskanyan said.
He supposed that probably for this reason the Azerbaijani military
violated cease-fire in an attempt to get rid of a surplus of
weapons. Not a single state or nation in the civilized world now
uses its military budget to compete with neighbours, he said. Today
countries are competing in different spheres such as economy, education
and culture, he said.
“In all these spheres Azerbaijan is inferior to Armenia and knows
this very well,” Sarkisyan stressed. Armenia is ahead of Azerbaijan in
creating favourable conditions for investment, free economy, democracy
and freedom of speech, he said. “International organizations say this,”
Oskanyan stressed.
Citing the World Bank’s data, he said that although Azerbaijan was
exporting oil, the country had not caught up with Armenia’s level
of per-capita income. “I would like to advise Azerbaijan to try and
compete with Armenia in these spheres, instead of boasting about
their oil resources and comparing military budgets,” the minister said.
He expressed regret that Aliyev had made his statement at a time when
both states have a task to prepare people in Armenian and Azerbaijani
to peace. “We consider that Azerbaijan is to blame for the failure
of the peace talks and such statements play a major role in this,”
the minister said.