Russia, Armenia to promote development of humanitarian coop-Putin

ITAR-TASS News Agency
March 25, 2005 Friday

YEREVAN, March 25 — Russian President Vladimir Putin noted that
the Russian and Armenian leaderships intend to make all efforts to
develop bilateral humanitarian cooperation.

“We are looking for ways to overcome these problems,” Putin said
in reply to a query why contacts between young generations of the
countries in the humanitarian sphere became less intensive than
between elder generations. “The more persistently we will do it,
the more effectively we will resolve it,” the president believes.

In his view, some decline in relations “is caused by limited contacts
between people” as compared with the Soviet Union. “This is not of
political character, but the economic aspect is rather more important,
and this is caused by the fact that this is more difficult for people
to move than in the Soviet times,” Putin pointed out.

For his part, Robert Kocharyan supported his Russian counterpart. “It
is a pity to lose what many generations have achieved,” he remarked.
“All of us will win from mutual enrichment,” the Armenian president
believes. “We will try to create an instrument, so that we could
tackle these problems,” he pledged.