ASTANA – Kazakhstan is Armenia’s friendly, important and reliable partner, said President of Armenia Vahagn Khachaturyan, in an interview with Kazinform, focusing on the development of bilateral relations with Kazakhstan and promising opportunities for cooperation.
President of Armenia Vahagn Khachaturyan. Photo credit: Akorda
Khachaturyan, who paid an official visit to Kazakhstan on Oct. 15-16, met with President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, toured the Astana International Financial Centre (AIFC) and inaugurated the Days of Armenian Culture in Kazakhstan.
According to Khachaturyan, Kazakhstan and Armenia are friendly countries that have long-standing friendly relations and now continue to cooperate in all spheres of life of our countries and our peoples. This concerns the economy, culture, new technologies, politics in bilateral and multilateral relations.
“It is very important that the leaders of the countries are now continuing our centuries-old friendly relations and using them for the development of our countries, helping each other and taking into account the difficulties that we are now experiencing, especially Armenia. (…) I mean not only economic relations, but also political ones. For example, this year we were given the opportunity to organize a meeting of the Foreign Ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia in Almaty, where they were able to discuss the issues of the Peace Agreement that have not yet been resolved. During the official meeting with President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, we discussed this situation. Kazakhstan is ready to provide its platform if necessary,” he said.
Khachaturyan emphasized that both countries share common tasks and problems.
“I carefully read Tokayev’s state-of-the-nation address delivered on Sept. 2 and the tasks he set for the country and the government. It turns out that we have the same tasks and the same problems. We talked about this too. We are now in almost the same situation – this is the transformation of the political and economic systems of our countries. In this transformation, we proceed from the fact that we are democratic countries, we are free countries, and we are independent countries. Based on this, we must find the best option for economic development, increasing the well-being of our people, our citizens. For example, Kazakhstan is going to write a new Tax Code, we are going to too. Kazakhstan is going to write a new Water Code, we are too. Kazakhstan has problems with the shadow economy, we also have such problems, that is, there are many similar things,” he said.
Answering a question about priority areas of relations between Kazakhstan and Armenia, Khachaturyan said they are the high-tech side of the economy, education and energy sector.
“Kazakhstan is currently making huge investments in IT and high technologies. Armenia is also developing at a very high rate — 20-25% of development in this area per year. I believe that this is a very important area of development in the economies of our countries, and we can cooperate in it. Another important area is education. We are very interested in the achievements that you have. The future of our countries depends on the development of education, this is the policy of both Kazakhstan and Armenia. Also, new opportunities will also appear in the energy sector, because after the referendum, Kazakhstan decided to build a new nuclear power plant, and in Armenia, the nuclear power plant has been operating since the 1970’s and is still operating, we are also going to build a new nuclear power plant. So, in this area, we also have a new opportunity to discuss and look. Nuclear power is a high-tech industry that we, a small country, and countries like Kazakhstan need. Nuclear power is very important for solving energy problems in the future,” he noted.
