ARMENIA TO COOPERATE WITH NATO WHILE STAYING IN CIS SECURITY SYSTEM – PM

Interfax-AVN military news agency, Russia
Sept 25 2007

Moscow, 25 September: Armenian Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan finds
it necessary to develop relations between Yerevan and NATO.

"Armenia is a member of the Collective Security Treaty Organization
(CSTO) anyway, but I believe it is right to develop ties with NATO,"
he told a news conference in Moscow, on Tuesday [25 September].

Sargsyan said that the Armenian leadership is not raising the issue
of entering NATO.

"But that does not mean that we should be enemies with NATO. Of course
we have to cooperate," Sargsyan said.

Commenting on the determination of certain countries in the region,
Georgia in particular, to join the alliance, he said: "It is the
internal affairs of every state which security system to work with."

He also raised the subject of possible deployment of elements of
the US missile defence system in Eastern Europe and expressed the
opinion that the interests of all the partiers concerned should be
taken into account. "All measures aimed at [strengthening] security
should be welcomed, if this is not the security of just one country,"
Sargsyan said.

The Armenian prime minister also expressed the hope that the Iran
nuclear problem would not be resolved by military means. "For us this
would be the most unwelcome outcome because Iran is a very important
country for Armenia," he said. [Passage omitted]

Sargsyan stressed the importance of relations between Tehran and
Yerevan and said Armenia intended to expand cooperation with Iran,
in the energy sector among others.