“Chorrord Ishkhanutyun” criticizes the Armenian parliament for ratifying on Thursday a Russian-Armenian agreement on bilateral “military-technical cooperation.” The paper claims that the deal allows Russia to “control the use of weapons supplied to Armenia” and that the Armenian military will not be able to deploy them without Moscow’s consent.
Meanwhile, Arkadi Ter-Tadevosian, a retired army general who played a major role in the 1991-1994 war with Azerbaijan, stresses the significance of another treaty relating to a joint Russian-Armenian military force, in an interview with “Zhamanak.” “We have to understand that a single state cannot act on its own and must form an alliance with another state,” he says. “Everyone is allied to each other. There are no lone states. Having such an alliance, we will have a clear idea on what could happen.” The signing of the Russian-Armenian accord last year was therefore a “very positive step,” concludes Tadevosian.
“Haykakan Zhamanak” reacts to President Serzh Sarkisian’s visit on Thursday to an expanding textile factory mostly belonging to the family of Samvel Aleksanian, one of Armenia’s wealthiest businessmen linked to his administration. An official press release on the visit said that the Alex Textile company now employs 470 people. Citing some government figures, the paper contends that only up to 308 of them are officially registered with tax authorities. “That in turn means that 162 of this company’s 470 employees are part of the shadow [economy] and the employer withholds their income tax from the state budget,” it claims.
(Tigran Avetisian)
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