RUSSIAN, ARMENIAN PREMIERS TO DISCUSS PRESSING BILATERAL ISSUES
ITAR-TASS, Russia
July 11, 2014 Friday 04:03 AM GMT+4
MOSCOW July 11
– Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and his Armenian colleague
Ovik Abramyan will meet in Sochi on Friday, July 11, to discuss
pressing issues of bilateral cooperation in trade, economic,
investment, industrial, energy, infrastructure, humanitarian, and
cultural fields.
They will also discuss Armenia’s participation in the Eurasian economic
integration processes.
Abramyan will visit the Olympic Village in Sochi. He will be
accompanied by several ministers and the head of the Armenian
migration service.
At a meeting in Minsk in May, the Russian and Armenian heads of
government discussed Armenia’s accession to the Customs Union created
by Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia.
They also agreed that Moscow would provide a 300 million U.S. dollar
loan to Yerevan for the modernisation of the nuclear power plant
in Metsamor.
The plant, the only one in the region, is located in the city of
Metsamor, some 30 km south of Yerevan. It was commissioned in 1980 and
stopped in March 1989 after a devastating earthquake in December 1988.
It was put into operation again in 1995 after having been equipped
with two Russian-made reactors. In March of this year, the Armenian
government approved a proposal to extend the plant’s service life
for ten years using a Russian loan.
Trade turnover between Russia and Armenia is growing steadily. “Last
year, trade turnover increased by 10.6 percent from the previous
year and keeps growing this year too. And Russia remains the leading
investor in Armenia,” President Vladimir Putin said during a meeting
with Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan in May.
Putin recalled that during his latest visit to Armenia important
agreements had been reached and invited Sargsyan to “synchronise
watches” and see “what else needs to be done and where we should
speed up our work”.
Sargsyan said Russian-Armenian relations were developing dynamically
and assured Putin that Yerevan would seek to intensify them.
“We are ready for active work. This is consistent with the historical
tradition of friendship between our nations,” he said.
Russian-Armenian relations are regulated by more than 160 treaties and
agreements, including on friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance,
as well as on allied relations.
The two countries have good prospects in many sectors of the economy,
primarily in the energy sector, the power industry, atomic energy,
and many other serious projects.
There is also a big potential in joint development of the
agro-industrial sector in Armenia.
Putin stressed earlier that Russian-Armenian relations had deep
historical roots, had grown into allied partnership and continued to
develop further.
He also expressed confidence that together Russia and Armenia would
be able to further strengthen their relations and expand cooperation
in various multilateral formats, including in the context of Armenia’s
accession to the Customs Union.
Russia pledged to assist Armenia in joining the Eurasian Economic
Union to be created from January 1, 2015. Abramyan said there were
no fundamental disagreements over the issue.
Armenian parliament speaker Galust Saakyan said during a visit to
Moscow earlier this week that Armenia had met all the conditions set
forth in the roadmap for accession to the Eurasian Economic Union. He
believes that Armenia’s participation in the EaEU and the Customs
Union of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia will create new mutually
advantageous prospects for their member states.
On September 3, 2013, after talks with Russian President Vladimir
Putin, Sargsyan announced that the “Republic of Armenia will join
the Customs Union and will take practical steps to this end and will
subsequently participate in forming the Eurasian Economic Union”.
At their summit in Moscow on December 24, 2013, the presidents of
Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Armenia approved an accession roadmap,
which said that the treaty on Armenia’s accession to the Customs
Union would be ready by May 2014.
Preliminary results of implementation by Armenia of the roadmap for
accession to the Customs Union were reported to the presidents of
the member states at a meeting of the Eurasian Economic Commission
on March 5, 2014.
The Customs Union between Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan was
established on December 19, 2009, in Almaty, Kazakhstan, where the
leaders of the three states – Dmitry Medvedev, Alexander Lukashenko,
and Nursultan Nazarbayev – signed the Joint Statement on its founding.
The first phase of the Customs Union’s functioning began on January 1,
2010, with the introduction of a uniform customs tariff.
President Putin expressed hope that the agreement on the creation of
the Eurasian Economic Union would become effective from January 2015.
Common markets of oil, petroleum products and gas of the three
countries will start operating no later than 2025, and a common
electricity market slightly earlier.
Putin stressed the need to guarantee “four freedoms”: free movement
of goods, services, capital and labour among the member states. “It
is important to set forth concrete obligations to eliminate exclusions
and limitations remaining in the Customs Union and the Common Economic
Space,” Putin said.