Moscow has recently hosted a video conference with Yerevan to discuss political forces involved in parliament polls, campaign favourites and their effect on Russian-Armenian relations.
Alexander Markarov, Director of the Armenian branch of the Institute for CIS States, said that none of the parties running for parliament has plans to scrap cooperation with Russia, CIS or CSTO. The campaign is peculiar for stress on domestic political problems, socio-economic development, with less attention to foreign policy and even the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. A lot of attention is paid to employment problems.
Alexander Krylov, senior scientist of the IWEIR of the RAS, President of the Science Society of Caucasus Studiers, agreed that no dramatic changes in relations with Russia should be expected. However, there are escalation tendencies due to the situation in Iran, Afghanistan, Greater Middle East, Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh.
There were proposals to replace Russian security guarantees with alternate ones, including what was mentioned in 2008.
Alexander Iskandaryan, Director of the Caucasus Institute, said that the elections would not affect Russian-Azerbaijani relations. There are no pro-western or pro-Russian tendencies in political parties.
Iskandaryan denied possibilities of political parties formed as projects of foreign states. All parties have contacts with foreign partners and position themselves as Armenian, based on domestic realities. Calling Armenia an arena of Obama’s, Putin’s or Sarkozy’s projects is a pointless and primitive idea, he concludes.
