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MOSCOW (RFE/RL)–The presidents of Armenia and
Russia spoke of their countries’ common geopolitical interests
in the South Caucasus as they held talks outside Moscow late on
Monday.
“Thank you and Russia for supporting our
initiatives to strengthen peace and stability in our region,”
President Serzh Sarkisian told his Russian counterpart, Dmitry
Medvedev, at the start of their meeting in the latter’s Gorky
retreat.
“We are interested in solving all issues by
peaceful means, and here we are not only strategic allies but
probably think in the same way,” Sarkisian said.
“Yes, of course, absolutely,” agreed Medvedev.
Sarkisian similarly thanked Moscow for its
“big efforts towards settling the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and
relations between Armenia and Turkey” when he received Russia’s
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Yerevan on Thursday. The
Armenian leader seemed particularly buoyed by an effective
Russian endorsement of Yerevan’s position on the normalization
of Turkish-Armenian ties.
Meeting with his Turkish counterpart Recep
Tayyip Erdogan early last week, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir
Putin publicly urged Ankara to stop linking the implementation
of its fence-mending agreements with Yerevan to the resolution
of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Lavrov reaffirmed the call in
the Armenian capital.
“We are going to discuss with you our current
agenda – both economic ties and our contacts in the foreign
policy sphere,” Medvedev told Sarkisian. He singled out “serious
projects” planned by the two states and international efforts to
settle the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
“We are going to talk about what to do this
year because a lot of good things can be done for our relations
and our peoples this year,” Medvedev added.
“I think that we have all the grounds to
achieve more serious successes in 2010,” Sarkisian responded.
The talks continued behind the closed doors.
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