Salome Zourabichvili's first visit to Armenia

| News, Armenia, Georgia

From 13 to 14 March, Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili's first official visit to Armenia took place since her inauguration. In the Armenian capital, Zourabichvili met with her Armenian counterpart Armen Sarkisian as well as with the head of the government Nikol Pashinyan, parliamentary president Ararat Mirzoyan and the head of the Armenian Apostolic Church Karekin II. The Russian newspaper "Nezavisimaya Gazeta" reports that the visit of Zourabichvili to Armenia could not last serve a "regional balancing act" after visiting Azerbaijan at the end of February.

Tourism, new technologies, energy and transport infrastructure are priority areas of Georgian-Armenian cooperation, according to Zourabichvili. "There are big plans both in cooperation with the EU and without the EU. It is time for our countries to complete the border demarcation process. This should not take that long between friends," said the Georgian president, reminding that the legal framework had been prepared when she was still running the Georgian Foreign Ministry. In addition, Zourabichvili promised that she would work for a better integration of Georgian ethnic Armenians into the country's social and economic life. According to the 2014 census, an estimated 170,000 ethnic Armenians live in Georgia, which accounts for 4.5% of the country's total population.

With regard to the existing conflicts in the region, Zourabichvili has stated that it is of utmost importance to Georgia that the unresolved conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia will not spread to Georgian territory. The Georgian president apparently spoke in the context of the recent "monument dispute" (Caucasus Watch reported) between ethnic Armenians living in Georgia and Azerbaijanis. This case has caused tensions in Georgia as well as burdening Georgian relations with Azerbaijan. But it should not have been forgotten in Armenia that on her visit to Baku two weeks ago, Zourabichvili expressed her solidarity with Azerbaijan on the question of the occupation of its territory. "The occupation still remains a painful wound for us. This bothers our development, but despite these tragedies we have been able to strengthen our statehood and economy," said Zourabichvili in light of the conflicts in Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

According to the Russian newspaper "Kommersant", Salome Zourabichvili's Baku remarks were critized with "varying degrees of sharpness" at her meetings in Yerevan, with Armenian President Armen Sarkisian and Prime Minister Nikol Paschinyan among others. "However, the Georgian president did not find it necessary to justify her remarks or distance herself from them. On the contrary, she has made a number of complaints against the Armenian side," writes the newspaper.

During the meeting with the President of the Armenian National Assembly, Ararat Mirzoyan, Zurabishvili said: "For my country, it is very important that Armenia recognizes Georgia's territorial integrity not only verbally but also in reality, the Georgian president said that it means above all the visits of the delegations from Nagorno-Karabakh in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. "Thus, the organizers of these visits themselves show that these conflicts [of Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia and South Ossetia] are symmetrical." According to "Kommersant", recent statements by President Zourabichvili have been unprecedented throughout Georgia's post-Soviet history, as the country has so far maintained a policy of neutrality towards the parties to the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict.

During the meeting with Karekin II, the Georgian president called on him to revise the decision on the subordination of the Armenian Church in Abkhazia to the diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church in southern Russia. According to Zourabichvili, this decision is perceived as a violation of the territorial integrity of Georgia. She believes that Armenian churches in Abkhazia should either "fall under the jurisdiction of the Georgian diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church, as it historically was", or be directly subordinate to Karekin II.

 

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