EXPERT: ARMENIA NOT TO JOIN NATO BUT TO COOPERATE WITH IT

YEREVAN, June 13. /ARKA/. Armenia does not need to join NATO, but it is better cooperate with the organization, said Expert of Jane’s Information Group Analytical Centre (Washington) on the issues of defense and security Richard Giragosyan. He agreed with Armenia’s Prime Minister Serge Sargsyan, once again proving his point that Armenia does not need to join NATO.

“Armenia should cooperate with NATO, and the country may somehow benefit from that,” he said.
Alongside with this, he pointed out that Georgia’s joining NATO may contribute to the country’s development.
In his turn, Deputy Director of the U.S. Centre of National and International Research on Russia and Eurasia Kory Welt pointed out that similar progress in Georgia may contribute, in particular, to the construction and development of state institutes.

“I think that in two, maximum five years Georgia will join NATO,” he said.

Earlier Armenia’s Prime Minister Serge Sargsyan had said in his interview to the Russian newspaper “Moskovsky komsomolets” that he did not think that Armenia should join NATO. “Now we are in such a security system which fully satisfies us. And we are not going to change anything. I do not think that we should join NATO,” Sargsyan said.

At the same time he said that Armenia intends to deepen its relations with NATO. During the seminar “Possibilities and challenges of the South Caucasus’ integration in the North Atlantic structures” held in Yerevan on May 25, Richard Giragosyan said that Armenia should use the NATO experience in reforming national security sector, as well as in the process of involving civil specialists in the structures of the RA Ministry of Defense, providing transparency of the processes in the structure of the military budget. –0--