The statement of President Serzh Sargsyan on the results of the negotiations with President Giorgi Margvelashvili before the representatives of mass media

Honorable Mr. President,
Respected Representatives of Mass Media,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

I welcome the President of the friendly country Georgia Giorgi Margvelashvili’s delegation to Armenia.

Honorable Mr. President, let me once again congratulate you on the occasion of your election as the President of Georgia and reconfirm our readiness to work with you in the spirit of a friendship and harmony. We attach great importance to your visit to Armenia in the framework of which we conducted practical and effective negotiations and discussed the entire agenda of the Armenian-Georgian relations.

By tradition, we attach great significance to the development of good-neighborly relations between Armenia and Georgia. The warm and friendly relations between the Armenian and Georgian peoples are the guarantee of our interstate and mutually beneficial cooperation and the best way to maintain stability in the region. The consistent reinforcement of the Armenian-Georgian collaboration is one of the vital components of Armenia’s foreign policy agenda.

Over the recent period, an ascending development of the bilateral relations has been recorded. The reciprocal visits which are the illustration of the high-level political dialogue have been noticeably intensified. During the meeting, I said that in 2013 there has been one visit at a Prime Minister level and 15 ministerial visits. I think that this is a good number which speaks about the high political dialogue which, in its turn, is the best stimulus to invigorate the economic cooperation.

There are clear directions formed in the sphere of trade cooperation between Georgia and Armenia, including the sphere of transport and energy, tourism and the recycling of agricultural goods. I am sure that the consecutive 10th meeting of the Armenian-Georgian intergovernmental committee to be convened in Yerevan will afford an opportunity to discuss the implementation course of the previous arrangements and to delineate the prospects of our economic cooperation. We agree that our countries' choices regarding the economic development should never hinder our economic relations. To be clear, we think that Armenia's decision to join the Customs Union and Georgia's decision to sign a free trade agreement with the European Union will not hinder our economic relations. Conversely, those decisions give new opportunities to our businessmen. In this context, I stress the importance of the formation of the joint working group on the Armenian-Georgian trade issues. The first meeting of the joint working group is to be convened on March 21 of 2014.

We also touched upon the participation of Armenia in the integration processes of the Eurasian region. I introduced to our Georgian counterparts the works already implemented in that direction and the subsequent plans, as well as the amalgam of the arguments and approaches on the grounds of which we chose to join the Customs Union.

We touched upon the infrastructural projects in the South Caucasus region as an important component for the maintenance of security and stability in the region.

In the context of the regional security, we analyzed the cooperation on international platforms and stressed the importance of the effective collaboration on those platforms, as well as the maintenance of a balanced and constructive position on the each other's sensitive issues.

We and the President of Georgia agreed that the comprehensive settlement of all the conflicts is possible exclusively in a peaceful way in conformity with the principles of international law.

Certainly, we also discussed issues regarding the educational and cultural cooperation and stated that we still have works to do in this field. Historically, the Armenian and Georgian peoples are tied together by traditions, as well as by common spiritual and cultural values. It is the wealth that we are obliged to cherish, preserve and fortify.

I asked Mr. President to send my gratitude to the former Prime Minister of Georgia Bidzina Ivanishvili for allocating resources from his private fund to restore one of the Armenian churches in Tbilisi.

To sum up my speech, let me assure that this visit will give a strong impulse to the consolidation of good-neighborly and, why not, brotherly relations between Armenia and Georgia and will trigger the full-scale realization of the entire potential of the Armenian-Georgian relations.