President Armen Sarkissian met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and called for closer ties between Armenia and Germany on Wednesday during an official visit to Berlin late.
“Armenia views Germany as an important political and economic partner and a friendly country,” Sarkissian was reported to tell Merkel at the start of their talks. He said he is looking forward to their further “discussions regarding the expansion of German-Armenian relations.”
Sarkissian made similar comments when he met with Germany’s President Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Tuesday. “Germany is a friend and a leading economic partner of Armenia and an active promoter of the Armenia-European Union agenda,” he said, according to his office.
“Germany is of interest to us also as a country with a parliamentary system of government, and German experience in parliamentary democracy can be very important and useful for us,” added Sarkissian, who has largely ceremonial powers.
According to a statement by the office, Merkel spoke of her “fond memories” of her August 2018 visit to Yerevan during which she met with Sarkissian and Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian.
Speaking after the talks with Pashinian, Merkel praised Armenia for deepening its relations with the EU while remaining allied to Russia. She also said Germany would welcome closer commercial and cultural ties with Armenia and pledged to help Yerevan implement a landmark agreement with the EU signed in November 2017.
Earlier on Tuesday, Sarkissian had a lunch meeting with a group of German diplomats, parliamentarians and pundits.Photographs released by the presidential press service showed him sitting next to Cem Ozdemir, a prominent German politician of Turkish descent. Ozdemir was a key sponsor of a 2016 resolution by the German parliament that recognized the 1915 Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey.
While in Berlin, Sarkissian also met with senior executives of several large German companies. He urged them to invest in Armenia, arguing, among other things, that his country has tariff-free access to the vast Russian market.
Germany has long been Armenia’s number one EU donor. It is also the South Caucasus nation’s third largest trading partner. According to official Armenian statistics, German-Armenian trade soared by 40 percent, to $325 million, in the first nine months of this year.
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