RA president Robert Kocharyan will pay a visit to Germany by the end of this year to take part in the CIS summit in Minsk. He will then make the trip to Kazakhstan. On August 30, the president’s press secretary, Viktor Soghomonyan officially informed this during an interview.
The latter said that this was preliminary information and that there were still discussions going on. Besides that, there are some diplomats discussing the details of the official visit of the president of France, Jacques Chirac to Armenia. The presidents of Slovenia and Romania are going to visit Armenia by the end of this year too. The president’s press secretary says that for the time being, there is no concrete information concerning any possible meetings of the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan. “The foreign affairs ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan have met and this is a fixed process; the foreign affairs ministers will try to arrange a meeting of the presidents when they meet”, said V. Soghomonyan and added, “Currently we can’t say that the mentioned phase of negotiations will not take place by the end of this year”. As for the the situation in the Middle East, the press secretary said that Armenia is not going to send a peacekeeping troops to the region of the Israeli-Lebanese conflict. “On the one hand, the mandate of the peacekeeping forces is not clarified yet, i.e. it is unclear as to how they will take action. On the other hand, Armenia should think of the Armenian Diaspora of Lebanon and the fact that any involvement of Armenian forces in conflicts may harm the interests of the Armenian Diaspora. Yerevan local authorities must think about that”, said V. Soghomonyan. In response to a journalist’s question V. Soghomonyan said that he didn’t have any information on whether the president would join any parties or not. V. Soghomonyan also said why the president had not attended the funeral of Armenian writer Silva Kaputikyan. “The president rarely attends funerals”, said V. Soghomonyan and explained that in such cases there would be problems connected with security norms. In response to a note that he had visited he funeral process of Hrant Matevosyan he said, “I said he rarely goes to such places. The president only goes places where there is high security”, explained the president’s press secretary. He assured that there were no conflicts between the president and defense minister. “As for Prosperous Armenia and Republican parties, please note that they are not in a conflict either. As I see in the press there are only some contradictions of speeches and opinions expressed by different representatives of their parties, but I think that this is a normal process because if there weren’t such things it would mean that all the parties are on the same path and could join each other. I don’t see anything dramatic here”, announced V. Soghomonyan. In regard to the new Armenian anthem, the press secretary said that the president had his own favorite version, but they wouldn’t publish that information so that people wouldn’t think that it is pressure on the commission in charge of electing one version among the five versions that is being discussed. V. Soghomonyan also talked about different articles printed in the presses saying that the Armenian authorities have contacts with criminal groups. This has to do with the article of the interview that head of “New Times” party Aram Karapetyan gave to a Russian newspaper, where he says that while Russia supports the Armenian authorities, which support criminal groups, Armenia goes out of the sphere of influence of Russia slowly and moves towards the U.S. “It is difficult to interpret the article of Aram Karapetyan because it is very difficult to interpret absurd ideas. I have never taken on such a responsibility”, said V. Soghomonyan and added that it would be better to call the abovementioned article as “A tale from Indian movies”. “I have nothing else to say, this is just nonsense”, said V.Soghomonyan. “As for criminal groups, I have read many times that criminals exist. As far as I understand, none of them has given any concrete information. However, I haven’t seen anything in Mass Media which would point out any specific facts and would say that there are facts proving the crimes”, said V. Soghomonyan in closing.