ARMENIA ESPECIALLY INTERESTING FOR NETHERLANDS

ARMINFO News Agency
September 20, 2006 Wednesday

The Netherlands take a special interest in Armenia, said Ambassador
of the Netherlands to Armenia Onno Elderenbofch during his meeting
with Armenian Parliamentary Speaker Tigran Torosyan, Wednesday.

The diplomat said the program of Armenia’s acts under the EU policy
of New Neighborhood will expand the cooperation opportunities for the
two states. Ambassador Elderenbofch expressed readiness to contribute
to organizing mutual visits of politicians after the parliamentary
elections in the Netherlands.

In his turn, T. Torosyan said that integration into Europe is one
of the prior directions of Yerevan’s foreign political course. In
this way, the exchange of experience of the two states is of great
importance, the speaker said. As regards the situation in the region,
T. Torosyan said Armenia is ready to cooperate with all the countries
of the region without any preconditions. However, Turkey and Azerbaijan
are not ready for this. Moreover, Azerbaijan wages an anti-Armenian
propagandist policy preventing the settlement of the Karabakh conflict
and contradicting to PACE requirements. The settlement of Karabakh
conflict is not conditioned by oil dollars like Azerbaijan believes
it to be. It is not accidental that EU is concerned over the increase
of Azerbaijan’s military budget and the militarist statements by
official Baku, he said. As a counterbalance to the relations with
Turkey and Azerbaijan, the relations with Iran develop on the basis
of mutual respect, the speaker said. The construction of a second
branch-line of Iran-Armenia gas pipeline was discussed during the
recent visit of Iranian speaker to Armenia. In his turn, Ambassador
Elderenbofch stressed the importance of energy independence of the
region for establishment of peace and stability.

The sides also discussed the parliamentary elections of 2007 in
Armenia. The speaker said that OSCE, PACE and other delegations will
observe the elections in Armenia. If the elections meet international
standards, the CE monitoring of Armenia will stop as all the laws
included in the country’s commitments to the CE will be adopted by
that time. As regards international conventions, Armenia has already
ratified them, the speaker said.