ARMENIAN DM PRAISES LEVEL OF COOPERATION WITH RUSSIA

ITAR-TASS News Agency
April 18, 2006 Tuesday 09:21 PM EST

Armenia and Russia maintain a high level of cooperation in defense
and related technologies and their cooperative interests embrace a
broad spectrum of problems, Armenian Defense Minister Serge Sarkissian
says in an interview the Russian Army daily Krasnaya Zvezda published
Wednesday.

“We must by no means stop at what we’ve achieved to date,” he says.

“On the contrary, we must develop this relationship, all the more so
that we have a legal and historical basis for it as well as willing
to do it.”

Sarkissian mentions Armenia’s cooperation with NATO, saying: “We
don’t develop it at the expense of relations with Russia, since the
latter must expand in all areas but we realize it’s important to be
familiar with the experience gained in other Armed Forces.”

“Today’s Armenian Army includes mechanized infantry and Air Force
units,” Sarkissian says. “We don’t have separate branches and services
of the Army or separate staffs for them. We have a single Joint Staff
that guides the operation of all the units – five separate corps,
an artillery detachment, and antiaircraft defense brigades.”

“The total manpower [of all of those units] is 45,000 men and
officers,” he says. “Naturally, that’s too much for a country with a
population of just 3 million people, but we must keep it up because
of instability in Southern Caucasus and absence of solutions to the
Karabakh problem.”

The latter centers around the mostly Armenian-populated Azerbaijani
enclave of Karabakh that has been seeking independence, or some form
of association with Armenia since late 1980’s.

“Unfortunately, any of the smoldering conflicts in Southern Caucasus
may play the role of a detonator,” Sarkissian said. “The regions is too
small and all the countries there are interdependent on one another,
and that’s why a resumption of combat operations may have very bad
consequences, including for ourselves.”

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress