RUSSIAN, ARMENIAN LEADERS PRAISE TIES
Aza Babayan

850018.html
12.10.2009

The presidents of Armenia and Russia praised the current state
of bilateral ties on Monday during talks held just days after
significant developments in the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process and
the Turkish-Armenian dialogue.

A statement issued by the Kremlin after the meeting said Serzh
Sarkisian and Dmitry Medvedev discussed ways of stepping up
Russian-Armenian economic and military cooperation as well as
"prospects for the realization of large-scale joint projects in the
energy sphere." The statement did not specify whether two men also
touched upon the Karabakh conflict or Armenia’s ongoing rapprochement
with Turkey welcomed by Moscow.

Welcoming his Armenian counterpart in his Gorki retreat outside
Moscow, Medvedev recalled his trilateral meeting with Sarkisian and
Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev held Friday on the sidelines of a
CIS summit in Moldova’s capital Chisinau. "I think that the Russian
mediation in this process is also a very important measure of our
relations," he said.

"I want to thank you for our personal involvement in resolving the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict," Sarkisian said, for his part. "I want
to thank Russia’s leadership and you personally for supporting the
development of our relations with the Turkish Republic."

Sarkisian pointed to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s presence
at the signing of Turkish-Armenian agreements to normalize bilateral
relations in Zurich on Saturday alongside U.S. Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton and top European diplomats. The Gorki talks continued
behind closed doors, and it was not clear whether the two presidents
discussed the issue in detail. None of them made statements afterwards.

Speaking to journalists in Zurich, Lavrov called for a speedy
ratification of the agreements by the Turkish and Armenian
parliaments. "The signatories have to ratify the protocols the
sooner the better and get down to their realization in practice," he
said. Lavrov also said that Moscow is ready to assist in restoring
rail communication between the two nations, alluding to the fact
that Armenia’s rail network is managed by Russia’s state-run national
railway company.

In his opening remarks, Medvedev also regretted a nearly 20 percent
drop in the volume Russian-Armenian trade this year resulting from the
global economic downturn. "That is certainly unpleasant and we should
think about how to make up for that," he said. "But considering other
areas, things are on the whole not bad," added the Russian president.

"In my view, our arrangements of the past two-three years have allowed
us to get close to qualitatively new steps in the spheres of economics,
military-political and military-technical cooperation as well as the
humanitarian sphere," agreed Sarkisian.