ARMENIA HAS NO PLANS TO JOIN NATO – PRESIDENT

Mediamax
Nov 7 2007
Armenia

Yerevan, 7 November: Armenian President Robert Kocharyan thinks
"Armenia’s entry to NATO would affect the relations between Yerevan
and Tehran".

Kocharyan, who is on an official visit in Finland, made the statement
at the Aleksanteri Institute in Helsinki on 6 November.

"We are not speaking about joining NATO but developing cooperation with
the alliance," Kocharyan said. He added: "I don’t see a controversy
here especially that we do not consider NATO an enemy organization
and are not going to engage in war with it."

Kocharyan said that "there should be a reasonable cooperation with
NATO".

"We are not speaking about a NATO membership while being a full-fledged
member of other organizations. Besides, we are in a region where
joining NATO would create many new problems. We have very good
relations with Iran. We appreciate the relations and realize that
joining NATO would affect those relations. This is why we assume the
size of cooperation that would not irritate our partners and reduce
the level of our security," he said.