Armenia says will consider purchase of U.S. arms in case of decent offer

PanARMENIAN.Net - Armenia will consider the possibility of purchasing weapons from the United States in case there is a real good offer, acting Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan told reporters on Saturday, October 27.

The Armenian government is not restricted in anything, Pashinyan said

His comments came in response to remarks made by U.S. national-security adviser John Bolton, who said that the Trump administration wants to "look at" possibilities of weapons sales to Armenia that would not violate restrictions the U.S. Congress has imposed.

Bolton made the remarks in an interview with RFE/RL on Wednesday, October 25 after he met in Yerevan with Pashinian.

"We have restrictions Congress has imposed on the United States in terms of [weapons] sales to Azerbaijan and Armenia because of the [Nagorno-Karabakh] conflict, but there are exceptions to that," Bolton explained.

"As I said to the prime minister, if it’s a question of buying Russian military equipment versus buying U.S. military equipment, we’d prefer the latter," he said.

"We think our equipment is better than the Russians’ anyway. So we want to look at that. And I think it increases Armenia’s options when it’s not entirely dependent on one major power."