Armenia to partly replace Russian border guards at its main
international airport

AP Worldstream; Mar 22, 2006

Armenia is to partly replace Russian border guards stationed at its
main international airport with Armenian frontier troops, a top
commander said Wednesday.

Under a bilateral accord between Moscow and the ex-Soviet Caucasus
Mountain nation, border guards under Russian command patrol the
country’s borders with Iran and Turkey and Yerevan airport. Armenian
forces guard the border with Georgia and Azerbaijan.

The commander of Armenia’s border forces, Col. Armen Abraamyan, said
that within one or two months, graduates of a training center
modernized with U.S financial help would be ready to take over
frontier duties at the airport.

Armenia, an impoverished landlocked nation, hosts a major Russian army
base and has been seen as one of Russia’s closest allies in the
region.

But plans by Russian natural gas monopoly Gazprom to double the price
that Armenia pays for gas have angered Yerevan.

Russia withdrew its border guards last year from the Central Asian
nation of Tajikistan, where they had been stationed on the Afghan
frontier since the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union.