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 MOSCOW
(RFE/RL)—Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian praised his Russian
counterpart on Monday for his country’s involvement in the
Nagorno-Karabakh peace process and the development of
Armenia-Turkey relations during talks held just days after
Armenia signed conciliatory agreement with Turkey over the
establishment of diplomatic relations.
“I want to thank you for your 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.”
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.
The statement said 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 of
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.
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