ARMENIA AND RUSSIA TWO EQUAL PARTNERS FOR USEFUL COOPERATION, ARMENIAN AMBASSADOR CONSIDERS

PanARMENIAN.Net - Restoration of Armenian statehood did not alienate it from Russia, on the contrary, it consolidated friendship between the two nations, eliminating pre-conditions for ideologically established relations between the "elder" and one of the "younger brothers." Armenian ambassador to Russia Armen Smbatian told "Nezavisimaya Gazeta" Russian newspaper. In his words, there are two partners enjoying equal rights whose cooperation is useful and who enjoy their friendship. The publicly declared process of real approach of Armenia and Russia that began immediately after the collapse of the USSR became an element of the contemporary model of the world politics and this fact, as the ambassador notes, is accepted both by friends and enemies of such a process of getting closer. In his words, there were even statements of extremely disposed patriots on uselessness and even harmfulness of the development of interstate cooperation between Armenia and Russia. In Smbatian's opinion, these patriots should gain an understanding of the acting conception of the Russian foreign policy or make a comparative analysis of transformation of bilateral and multilateral interstate relations, applied all over the world today. This transformation, the ambassador supposes, pursues national security goals within the framework of guaranteeing international security for the whole of the world. The transformation of Armenian-Russian relations should be considered exactly from this point of view in order to establish their correspondence to the contemporary requirements.