KREMLIN: PRESS STATEMENTS BY PRESIDENT DMITRY MEDVEDEV FOLLOWING RUSSIAN-ARMENIAN TALKS
Official Web Portal of the President of Russia
June 24 2008
DMITRY MEDVEDEV: Ladies and gentlemen, colleagues, Serzh Azatovich,
These talks with the Armenian President continue our traditionally
full and rich top-level bilateral contacts. We saw each other just
recently, and you could say that we practically never even parted,
meeting not long ago in Moscow and in St Petersburg. But the main
thing is that we have reaffirmed our mutual commitment to developing
our strategic partnership and allied cooperation.
We discussed in detail the outlook for our bilateral business and
humanitarian ties today and exchanged views on key regional and
international issues.
The historically close cooperation between Russia and Armenia is
picking up in pace and substance today. The figures we heard today
reflect the real dynamic of our relations: trade turnover has increased
by two thirds and is now close to $1 billion. Russia is the biggest
investor in the Armenian economy with total capital investment now
more than $1.2 billion.
It is in our common interest to consolidate these positive trends
and continue to encourage investment and production and technological
cooperation. This is all the more so as big Russian businesses such as
Gazprom, Russian Aluminium, Vympelcom and Vneshtorgbank are working
successfully in Armenia. Serzh Azatovich and I agreed on a number
of additional steps to advance major projects being carried out,
including projects involving these companies.
Of course, we also need to encourage more active direct contacts
between our business communities, between big business and also
between small and medium businesses. This also contributes to shaping
the level of cooperation between our countries.
Humanitarian ties, including multilateral ties, were also one of
the main items on our agenda today. We held National Year events
in both countries – the Year of Armenia in Russia and the Year of
Russia in Armenia. These events created numerous opportunities for
interpersonal cooperation through festivals, arts exhibitions and
educational projects. Now we must work to preserve and nurture all
that we achieved.
Armenia is one of the most active participants in multilateral
humanitarian cooperation in the CIS, and this a very good thing.
I know that the first CIS humanitarian festival of Russian-language
broadcasting has just taken place in Yerevan, and this autumn our
countries will both be active participants at the third Forum of the
CIS Intelligentsia. These are positive things. Such initiatives will
continue to receive support at the highest state level.
Discussion of key international and regional issues was an important
part of our talks. We reaffirmed our readiness to increase our
cooperation within the Commonwealth of Independent States and the
Collective Security Treaty Organisation, in which Armenia will soon
hold the presidency. I am certain that close cooperation between Russia
and Armenia is a guarantee for the entire region’s stable and worthy
development. Russia’s priorities in this respect remain unchanged.
Our position is that crises in the Trans-Caucasus should be settled
exclusively through peaceful means, working through existing formats
and maintaining strict respect for international law. Our country is
ready to help find solutions that are in the fundamental interests
of all the region’s peoples.
This applies in full to the situation in Nagorny Karabakh too. We
underscored the mediator role played by the Minsk Group in the
negotiation process and spoke too of new possibilities for stepping
up the negotiations. We sense that there is interest on both sides.
Once again, I would like to thank Serzh Azatovich for the interested
and constructive dialogue that has taken place. I am sure that our
strategic cooperation and our work together as allies will continue
their confident development for the good of our countries and
peoples. This is very important for our countries’ future.
SERZH SARGSYAN: Dmitry Anatolyevich, ladies and gentlemen,
First of all, I would like to say thank you for the invitation, the
warm reception and the constructive talks that are taking place as
part of my first official visit to Russia as President of Armenia.
This shows that we want to continue building and expanding the
strategic relations between Armenia and Russia. We have just signed a
Joint Declaration that gives an assessment of the current state of our
relations, reaffirms our mutual desire to intensify our cooperation,
and outlines directions for its future development.
I want to highlight the main result achieved by today’s meeting. The
substance and trusting spirit of our talks reflected in full measure
the strategic level of our partnership.
We discussed a whole range of bilateral issues with the Russian
President and also examined international and regional issues. We
reaffirmed our readiness to continue work to improve the Commonwealth
of Independent States in order to make our integration efforts as
effective as possible.
We noted the importance of the Collective Security Treaty
Organisation. We examined the organisation’s current objectives,
especially in the context of Armenia’s upcoming presidency of the
organisation and our plans to hold the first large-scale military
command exercises – Rubezh-2008 – in Armenia in September.
I am certain that cooperation in the fuel and energy sector, science,
nuclear energy, high technology and the creation of advanced technology
are the most promising areas for our cooperation, and one of the
most important instruments we have in this respect is the dynamic
development of direct cooperation at the regional level between
our countries.
We agreed to look for new ways to build up our bilateral cooperation
and are ready to pay our utmost attention to developing concrete
mutually beneficial projects.
Cultural and scientific exchanges and closer civil society contacts
all help to bring our peoples closer together, spiritually enrich
them and strengthen our countries’ strategic partnership. I am sure
that the results of today’s substantial talks will give a positive
boost to our intergovernmental ties and have benefits for the lives
of all citizens of our two fraternal countries.
I have invited Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev to make an official visit
to Armenia this year to continue our dialogue.
Once again, I would like to thank the Russian Federation’s leadership
for the warm reception, the very productive talks, and for the desire
for continued cooperation that we will build for the good of our
two peoples.
Thank you very much.