September 16, 2004 - 22:15 AMT
ARMENIAN DEFENSE MINISTER MET WITH HIS LATVIAN COLLEAGUE
Yesterday Secretary of the Security Council under the RA President, Defense Minister Serge Sargsian received his Latvian colleague Edgars Rinkevics. During the meeting E. Rinkevics touched upon the possible fields for cooperation, specifying peacekeeping and education, and offered to send a group of Armenian experts to Latvia for familiarization with peacekeeping activities. The parties noted that the coming mutual visits of the Presidents of the two countries will contribute to the consolidation of ties and attach a new quality to them. In his turn, Serge Sargsian noted that cooperation with the NATO is a constituent of Armenia's security. Year by year our interaction is getting more active, thus Cooperative Best Effort-2003 exercises were held in Armenia, the RA Defense Minister said. Our partnership is secured by agreements thus forming a serious legal base for its future consolidation, though our foreign policy agenda does not include the question of accession to the Alliance, Sargsian stated. It should be noted that the members of the Latvian delegation also visited the monument to the Armenian Genocide victims and laid wreaths to the memorial.