“Haykakan Zhamanak” reports that a senior Georgian official, Zurab Abashidze, has refuted reports that Georgia and Russia have finalized an agreement on the opening of two transport corridors that will pass through Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Armenia welcomed those reports earlier this week, with Transport Minister Vahan Martirosian expressing hope that Armenia will get more reliable trade routes to Russia. Abashidze said, however, that the Russian and Georgian governments are only negotiating on a “monitoring of cargo turnover” between.
According to “Zhoghovurd,” the French ambassador in Yerevan, Jan-Francois Charpentier, has complained about the modest volume of Armenia’s trade with France which amounted to roughly $50 million last year. The paper recalls in this regard that President Serzh Sarkisian held a special meeting with senior Armenian officials and called for closer commercial ties with France in March last year. It says that the Armenian government has since taken no “serious steps in that direction.”
Davit Ishkhanian, a leader of the Nagorno-Karabakh branch of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun), assures “Hayots Ashkhar” that Nagorno-Karabakh’s image abroad will not suffer after its president, Bako Sahakian, extends his rule by at least three years. “Artsakh must never be compared with Azerbaijan,” Ishkhanian tells the paper. “Such statements are wide of the mark. Democracy is very important for us. We have no right or desire to register a setback in that area.” He argues that Sahakian will govern Karabakh until 2020 only as an interim president. “What’s the point of exploiting that?” he complains.
“Hraparak” quotes a food and agriculture expert as saying that agriculture is one of the few sectors that has already benefited from Armenia’s accession to the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). He points to rising exports of Armenian agricultural products and prepared foodstuffs to Russia. “All you have to do is to produce and deliver them to the Russian market,” he says.
(Tigran Avetisian)
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