Speaker denies Armenia is Russia’s “outpost”

Speaker denies Armenia is Russia’s “outpost”

Mediamax news agency
20 Dec 04

Yerevan, 20 December: Artur Bagdasaryan, speaker of the Armenian
National Assembly, expressed his negative attitude in Yerevan today
towards Russian State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov’s recent statement
that Armenia is Russia’s “outpost” in the South Caucasus.

“Armenia is a sovereign state and cannot be any country’s outpost,”
Bagdasaryan said, adding that Armenian-Russian relations are developing
in a “normal and natural way”. However, the speaker said that “they
are lagging behind Turkish-Azerbaijani relations in terms of their
content”.

Commenting on Gryzlov’s statement last week, Azerbaijani President
Ilham Aliyev said: “Armenia turns out to be a Russian outpost and
now we do not know who to talk to – this outpost or its owner.”