Armenia to give growth in economy priority over rights
By Andrew Bounds in Brussels

FT
April 9 2007 03:00

Armenia will put economic development ahead of human rights
improvements, its new prime minister said in an interview with the
Financial Times.

Serge Sargysan, the defence minister who was promoted on Wednesday
after the death of Andranik Margaryan from a heart attack last month,
said jobs were more important than rights. Despite double-digit
economic growth in the past few years, a third of the 3m-strong
population of the landlocked Caucasian republic lives below the
poverty line.

"It is hard to talk about democratic and human rights when you need to
solve the social and economic needs of the population," the prime
minister said during a trip to Brussels. "We would not like to be a
state stuck in our transition."

He said the huge Armenian diaspora – estimated at up to three times
the native population – should get more involved in the country. Only
1 per cent of investment came from them, he said, and he was looking
at ways they could be encouraged.

However, Mr Sargysan said the government in Yerevan would keep pledges
made to international bodies after criticism of its rights record and
he was hopeful that the May 12 parlia-mentary elections would be the
first to be pronounced free and fair by the Organisation for Security
and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the European security watchdog.

"We have made commitments to different programmes and we think
compliance is in our interest. We want to become part of the European
family."

Mr Sargysan, who helped organise militias that seized the enclave of
Nagorno-Karabakh from Azerbaijan in a three-year war following
independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, said his top priority was
to conclude a peace treaty with its Muslim neighbour.

The oil-rich state has been rearming recently but Mr Sargysan said
that was sabre-rattling. Turkey closed its border with Armenia during
the war and the premier said he would strive to restore relations and
sign a peace deal. Armenia could grow far faster if rapprochement was
reached with its bigger neighbours, he said.

Yet Armenia remains in control of Nagorno-Karabakh and hundreds of
thousands of people are still displaced. Turkey – which has been
offered talks without conditions – has shown no willingness to
compromise.

Mr Sargysan said that, despite ties to influential exiles in the US,
Yerevan would remain friendly to Moscow and would not support a US
base in the volatile Caucusus. In a swipe at neighbouring Georgia,
whose "rose revolution" against Russian domination has endeared it to
the west, he said he did not see it as a model to emulate.

"One can either exploit their differences between superpowers or work
with them. We prefer to work with them. There are many conflicts in
our region."

Mr Sargysan said Armenia would one day like to join the European Union
but had no desire to join the Nato defence alliance, although it was
working closely with it.