GEORGIA’S STABILITY EXTREMELY IMPORTANT FOR ARMENIA
Hrayr Zoryan Armenpress

Hayots Ashkhar Daily
01 Oct 2008
Armenia

"We highly appreciate the relations between Armenia and Georgia,
and we are also very glad to notice lots of opportunities to expand
our friendship, integrate our economies, and make communications more
stable," Armenian President Serge Sargsyan announced yesterday during
his tête-a-tête with Michael Sahakashvily.

Serge Sargsyan considers the existence of those opportunities
extremely important and underscored that he attaches great importance
to stability.

"I have told you many times that Georgia’s stability is extremely
important for Armenia, so important that we can compare it with
Armenia’s stability. 75% of our foreign commodity circulation passes
via Georgia; we have hundreds and thousands brothers and sisters in
Georgia and our activity derives from this circumstance."

In his turn Sahakashvili underscored that Armenia and Georgia are
historically close allies, friends and brother states, united not
only by their joint history but also their prosperous future. "We
follow all the events that take place in Armenia. We highly appreciate
Armenia’s stance towards Georgian events. We received unprecedented
assistance from the whole world, lots of countries expressed their
positive attitude and Armenia supported the idea of the peaceful
settlement of Georgi an conflict. Our unity is very important, not
only from the point of view of the authorities but also the people,"
Georgian president Michael Sahakashvily said and added that people
usually remember who helped them in their hard times.

Michael Sahakashvily underscored that ethnic Armenians have a great
role in Georgia. "We don’t make a distinction between our citizens
in terms of their ethnic origins, but meanwhile we respect their
culture, identity, because they are part of Georgian culture and
identity. Naturally we are in close cooperation with them, because
there should be a dialogue between the cultures."

He considered the border between Armenia and Georgia a border of
friendship: "Consequently together with the Armenian President we
decided to make it transparent," the Georgian President announced
and informed that next week Georgian Minister of Economy and Finance
will visit Armenia to discuss those issues. He said the process of
crossing the border must be very clear.

"In my view the border between Armenia and Georgia must be like the one
between Switzerland and France," he underscored and added: "Yerevan
and Tbilisy are so close that in some sense they are continuation of
each other, we must try to fill each other’s gaps."

In this regard Sahakashvily attaches great importance to road
construction.

He informed that at the moment the road connecting

Akhalkalak and Ninotsminda with Tbilisy is in the process of
construction, which will finish in two years. "This road must move to
the borders of Armenia and Turkey. The whole region must be united
by qualitative roads. We decided to create a consortium, which will
be engaged in road construction from Goderz mountain pass to the
Black Sea."

–Boundary_(ID_iL+m3rOhr7X4zMb1lgoNSQ) —