AZG Armenian Daily #226, 25/11/2006

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UPPER LARS PASS TO OPEN SOON AFTER REPAIR

The speakers of the Armenian and Russian Parliaments,
Tigran Torosian and Boris Gryzlov, gave positive
evaluation to the current level of bilateral
cooperation. In the course of the meeting of the two
states’ Parliament speakers, held in Moscow the day
before, Gryzlov emphasized that the progressive growth
of bilateral turnover of goods was fixed between our
countries. In particular, if the goods turnover
between Armenia and Russia during 2005 had grown by
60%, in the course of 8 months of 2006 this indicator
made 80%. Nevertheless, according to T. Torosian,
Russia takes only the fifth place by the Armenian
production export volumes, yielding to Belgium, the
Netherlands and other states. "Since our relations
with Russia are special, the trade relations must be
higher than with other states", Torossian said, having
expressed anxiety for the cases of extreme display of
extremism in Russia, which caused the recent murder
cases of Armenians. Gryzlov assured that this problem
arouses the concern of the Russian authorities as
well. He informed that a meeting of the leaders of
political parties with RF President, Vladimir Putin,
will be held on December 6, during which the issue of
counteraction to extremism and the extremist ideology
will be considered. The interlocutors also pointed out
high level of cooperation between the states in
international organizations, such as PACE, CIS IPA and
CSTO PA, in particular.