IRANIAN PRESIDENT TO VISIT ARMENIA NEXT WEEK

Agence France Presse — English
October 20, 2007 Saturday 3:08 PM GMT

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will make an official visit
to neighbouring Armenia on October 22 and 23 for talks with his
counterpart Robert Kocharian, the official news agency said Saturday.

The two men are expected to sign a series of bilateral agreements
Monday, and Ahmadinejad will also meet the head of the national
assembly, Tigran Torossian, and students and professors at Yerevan
University.

The Iranian leader is expected to visit a memorial to victims of the
Ottoman massacres of Armenians between 1915 and 1917, as well as the
Blue Mosque in Yerevan, and meet members of the Iranian community here.

Landlocked Armenia has sought closer links with Iran because of an
economic blockade imposed by neighbours Azerbaijan and Turkey over
the disputed Nagorny Karabakh region, as well as Armenia’s efforts
to gain international recognition of the Ottoman massacres as genocide.

In March, Kocharian and Ahmedinejad inaugurated a 150-kilometre
(93-mile) pipeline that will deliver 36 billion cubic metres (1.27
trillion cubic feet) of gas from Iran to Armenia over 20 years.