IRAN’S AHMADINEJAD PRAISES GROWING TIES WITH NEIGHBOUR ARMENIA

Agence France Presse
Oct 22 2007

YEREVAN (AFP) – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday praised
growing economic and political cooperation with Armenia, shoring up
closer ties with the ex-Soviet republic on Iran’s northern border.

"We consider our neighbourly relations with Armenia to be very
important and a means of strengthening security and stability" in
the region, Ahmadinejad said after meeting his Armenian counterpart,
Robert Kocharian, on the first day of a two-day visit here.

The presidents announced the opening of a new highway linking the
two countries and plans to build a cross-border railroad. They also
said they had discussed joint projects to build an oil refinery,
a hydroelectric power plant and wind power stations along the border.

"We will decisively and quickly realize joint programmes on the
establishment of major infrastructure projects," Ahmadinejad said.

"This is in the interest of our two countries and the region as
a whole."

Kocharian said the new railway was in the planning stages and praised
new transportation links as a chance to "increase the flow of goods
between our two countries."

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 Ottoman-era mass killings of
Armenians as genocide.

Backed by Armenia, ethnic Armenians seized control of Nagorny Karabakh
during a bloody war in the early 1990s that left thousands dead and
forced nearly a million people on both sides to flee their homes.

In March, Kocharian and Ahmadinejad 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.

Armenia will pay for the gas with electricity it produces at a
Soviet-era nuclear plant.

The United States has raised concerns about Armenia’s growing ties
with Iran, with the top US diplomat in Yerevan saying in June that
the country should participate in international sanctions aimed at
convincing Iran to halt its nuclear programme.

Ahmadinejad, who has caused outrage by saying the Holocaust is a
"myth," was scheduled on Tuesday to visit a memorial to victims of
the Ottoman massacres of Armenians between 1915 and 1917.

Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their kinsmen died in orchestrated
killings during the final years of the Ottoman Empire.

A pending US Congressional vote on a resolution labelling the
massacres as genocide has angered Turkey, which says 250,000 to
500,000 Armenians were killed during civil strife and rejects the
notion that it was genocide.

Ahmadinejad was also scheduled Tuesday to visit Yerevan’s Blue Mosque
and to meet with members of the Iranian community here.