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Security Summit Opens In Armenia
YEREVAN, May 25 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The leaders of six former Soviet republics gathered here for a security summit Friday.
In pre-summit talks Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Armenian counterpart Robert Kocharian discussed moves to settle the long-running conflict in Nagorno Karabakh.
An ethnic Armenian enclave inside Azerbaijan, Karabakh declared its independence in 1991 with Yerevan's support, prompting a war in which 30,000 were killed, but there has been little progress towards a political settlement since a 1994 ceasefire.
Putin, who came to the presidency from the ranks of the KGB and Kocharian, Armenia's self-proclaimed president since 1998, also discussed bilateral economic relations, according to government sources here. The sources added that the Armenian president had earlier met his Tajik counterpart Emomali Rakhmonov on the summit sidelines.
The presidents of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan were also attending Friday's summit of the collective security council of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS, a loose grouping of ex-Soviet republics, minus the Baltic Republics).
The six presidents were using the summit to "discuss the deepening of political and military cooperation and the improvement of joint effectiveness" of CIS members in combating threats to common security, the council said in a communiqué.
It was chiefly focusing on the setting up of a rapid reaction force for Central Asia able to repel incursions by Islamic groups backed by the Taliban militia in Afghanistan.
The first units of the reaction force, made up of Russian, Kyrgyz, Tajik and Kazakh troops, will be formed in August.
At the same time, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Armenia have struck an agreement after 20 months of talks on conditions for a $90 million loan to help the economy, Finance Minister Vardan Khachatrian said Thursday.
The 10-year loan, conditional on structural reforms and economic stability, would be extended to the Armenian central bank to help stabilize prices and support foreign exchange reserves.
The loan carries an interest rate of 0.5% with a grace period of no payments for the initial three years.
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