ITAR-TASS News Agency, Russia
Aug 12 2008
US embassy in Armenia denies reports of military experts going to
Georgia
Yerevan, 12 August: The US embassy in Yerevan today denied media
reports saying a plane carrying US military experts bound for Georgia
had allegedly arrived in Armenia, the embassy’s information department
has told ITAR-TASS news agency.
The Armenian Foreign Ministry issued a similar denial late in the
evening of Monday [11 August]. The republic’s deputy foreign minister,
Gegham Garibjanyan, said that "no plane from Romania landed in Yerevan
over the past days". "No military experts, coming from some other
country, arrived in Armenia," the republic’s deputy foreign minister
stressed. At the same time "several special flights for transporting
foreign citizens, who have left Georgia, landed at Yerevan’s and
Gyumri’s airports (former Leninakan – note by the ITAR-TASS
correspondent) over the last days," the diplomat said.
On Monday [11 August] the General Department of Civic Aviation [GDCA]
under the Armenian government denied the same-day report that US
military experts were going from Armenia to Georgia by transit. A
representative of the GDCA said previously that a US plane would fly
here from Romania. In connection with this some local news websites
did not rule out that the Americans would go to the area of the
Georgian – South Ossetian conflict on the same plane.
The GDCA press secretary, Gayane Davtyan, said that the media had
misinterpreted the agency’s report. She said that special flights from
[the Latvian capital] Riga and [the Estonian capital] Tallinn were
expected in Yerevan’s Zvartnots airport, which would carry Latvian and
Estonian citizens, evacuated from Georgia’s capital in connection with
the situation in South Ossetia, to their motherlands.
Observers in Yerevan suppose that Armenia, which, on the one hand,
develops close ally ties with Russia, and on the other hand, is an
active participant in the political and military integration within
the framework of the Collective Security Treaty Organization and CIS,
will hardly ensure transit of US instructors bound for Georgia, which
is unfriendly with Russia. Besides, according to an interstate
agreement, Russian frontier guards protect Armenia’s state border,
including in Yerevan’s airport, and they could not have left the
arrival of American military staff unnoticed.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress