YEREVAN (Arka) — Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan believes that more effective intergovernmental relations between Greece and Armenia provide fertile ground for more effective economic cooperation.
“The interstate and interethnic relations between Armenia and Greece are at a high level and continue to develop dynamically. I hope that we will be able to establish more effective economic cooperation against this fruitful background, which could produce positive results in other areas as well,” Pashinyan said at a meeting on Tuesday, November 5, with the visiting President of Greece Prokopis Pavlopoulos.
Pashinyan recalled that Greece was one of the first countries to recognize the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire. He said this grounds the fact that in 2015 the Armenian parliament officially recognized the genocide of the Greeks and Assyrians in the Ottoman Empire.
“And this fact provides the basis for seeking joint solutions to global security issues, especially since the process of recognizing genocides for our nations is not just an issue of recognition of historical reality, but also is an issue of global security to prevent their repetition in the future,” he said.
Pashinyan also emphasized that Armenia expects good results from a trilateral meeting in Yerevan with the heads of government of Greece and Cyprus, which has been scheduled for January 2020. The agreement was reached in September during a meeting between Pashinyan and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
Pavlopoulos, in turn, said that a trilateral format of meetings could stimulate the strengthening of relations between the two peoples in all spheres, as well as the development of relations between Armenia and the European Union. He also noted that the recognition of genocides could prevent similar crimes against humanity in the future.
