YEREVAN, November 27. /ARKA/. The Armenian government intends to raise the level of relations with Russia to a new level, acting Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said today in Vanadzor when campaigning for his My Step alliance for December 9 snap parliamentary elections.
“We must work with Russia to strengthen our strategic and allied relations. They should be taken to a new level both within the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and in the bilateral format,” said Pashinyan.
Regarding the recent events in the CSTO, Pashinyan noted that Armenia has a lot of questions that need to be clarified by its allies.
“It’s not clear to us why our allies in CSTO (Belarus and Russia) are selling weapons to a country hostile to us. We are determined to openly and sincerely discuss this question with our allies in order to know who we should trust. But we must first rely only on ourselves, and for this we need to increase the economic power of the country," said Pashinyan.
On November 8 the leaders of the CSTO member countries were supposed to elect a new secretary general at their meeting in Astana, Kazakhstan, but then agreed to postpone it until December 6, when they meet in Russian St. Petersburg.
The position became vacant after Armenia’s representative Yuri Khachaturov was dismissed as secretary general of the Russia-led organization on October 30. In Armenia Khachaturov has been charged by law-enforcement authorities with inciting a coup in Armenia in connection with the March 1, 2008 post-presidential election crackdown on opposition protesters, when eight civilians and two police officers were killed.
In an interview with Russian news agency TASS earlier this month Armenia’s acting Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanyan said Armenia has many candidates, capable of assuming the position of secretary general of the Collective Security Treaty Organization and holding it until the end of Armenia’s rotating term in 2020. This is openly opposed by Belarus and Kazakhstan. -0-