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  • From base to base

    Agency WPS
    What the Papers Say. Part B (Russia)
    June 3, 2005, Friday

    FROM BASE TO BASE

    SOURCE: Vremya Novostei, June 3, 2005, p. 5

    by Gajane Movsesjan


    Colonel Seiran Shakhsuvarjan, spokesman for the Armenian Defense
    Minister, said yesterday that the relocation of Russian weapons from
    Georgia to Armenia does not require "any additional documents or
    agreements." The first echelon with Russian military hardware left
    the Russian military base in Batumi for the Armenian town of Gyumri
    on Tuesday, May 31. According to the spokesman, deployment of Russian
    servicemen from Georgia in Armenia was not even discussed.

    The plans to move military hardware to Armenia became public
    knowledge even before this week, when Moscow and Tbilisi finally
    reached an agreement on withdrawing the Russian military presence
    from Georgia in 2008. The 102nd Military Base of the Russian Defense
    Ministry has been stationed in Armenia since 1995. Needless to say,
    official Baku (Azerbaijan) isn't exactly enthusiastic about the
    Kremlin's intentions. Novruz Mamedov of the Azerbaijani presidential
    administration said yesterday: "The relocation of military hardware
    to Armenia, a country that still occupies some Azerbaijani land, will
    not promote Azerbaijani-Russian relations."

    Russia is moving military hardware from one military base to another,
    Russian Charge d'Affaires in Baku Pyotr Burdykin said in his
    statement, released yesterday. "That does not mean we intend to turn
    the military hardware over to Armenia."

    Armenian Defense Minister Serzh Sarkisjan says that "the increase of
    the stocks of weapons" in the Russian military base promotes
    interests of Armenia. All the same, not everybody in Armenia itself
    shares this opinion. David Shakhnazarjan (envoy for Nagorno-Karabakh
    settlement when Levon Ter-Petrosjan was the president) maintains that
    the appearance of a new consignment of Russian weapons "will polarize
    the region to an even greater extent."

    Georgia and Azerbaijan are en route into NATO, while Armenia is a
    member of the CIS Collective Security Treaty Organization, from which
    Georgia and Azerbaijan withdrew from in 1999. Moreover, Sarkisjan
    himself confirmed the other day that NATO membership is not on
    Armenia's foreign policy agenda at this point.

    Amajak Ovannisjan, president of the Association of Armenian Political
    Scientists and a member of parliament, says that Russia may decide to
    move some of the military hardware or personnel to the base in
    Armenia, its only ally in the region and a member of the CIS
    Collective Security Treaty Organization. "But Armenia may demand from
    Russia better fulfillment of its obligations to the ally," he said.
    Ovannisjan maintains that Yerevan may demand changes in Russia's
    stance on the matter of Nagorno-Karabakh, which "Russia, as a legal
    successor to the Soviet Union, should formulate bearing in mind its
    historic responsibility for the fact that Karabakh was absorbed by
    Soviet Azerbaijan against its will."

    Translated by A. Ignatkin
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