Armenian PM tells British journalists who will benefit from peace with Azerbaijan
YEREVAN, April 23. /ARKA/. The primary beneficiaries of peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan are their peoples, and this can be achieved step by step, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said in an interview with a group of Britis journalists.
"Over the past five months, an important agreement has been reached with Azerbaijan, and this is an expression of the fact that the main beneficiaries of peace are the peoples of Armenia and Azerbaijan," he said.
In this context, Pashinyan noted that a number of statements coming from Azerbaijan about reforms and modernization of the Armenian army are worrisome.
"There is a significant imbalance between the military budgets of Armenia and Azerbaijan, and this imbalance is formed thanks income Azerbaijan receives from international investors and partners. But we are concerned that even in the conditions of this imbalance Azerbaijan reacts very aggressively to the reforms in the Armenian Armed Forces and acquisition of weapons and equipment, despite the fact that we all know that these weapons are of defensive nature," he said, adding that no country can challenge the right of another country to have a combat-ready army.
At the same time, the Prime Minister emphasized that having a combat-ready army is important for ensuring balance.
He said Armenia proposed Azerbaijan to create a bilateral arms control mechanism to avoid an arms race in the region.
"We have offered and are offering a mirror withdrawal of troops from the border areas. This proposal remains in force. We offered to sign a non-aggression pact until a peace agreement is reached on the basis that we recognize each other's territorial integrity," he said.
In this regard, Pashinyan noted that the agreement reached last week by the delimitation commissions of the two countries can contribute to peace in the region.
According to him, a lasting and stable peace will allow both Armenia and Azerbaijan to spend resources on solving their socio-economic problems, as well as to think about regional economic developments.
On April 19 Yerevan announced that Armenia and Azerbaijan had "tentatively agreed" to delimit various sections of the two countries' common border, adding that the delimitation would be based on the Alma-Ata Declaration. In the 1991 declaration, the two countries recognized each other's borders as they existed at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union.-0-
