On April 7, Deputy Foreign Minister of Armenia Arman Kirakossian participated in the preparatory meeting of the Eastern Partnership, which will be on 7th of May 2009.
The meeting was initiated by the Foreign Ministry of the Czech Republic – the country holding EU’s Presidency.
At the meeting the Eastern Partnership were presented on the level of Deputy Foreign Ministers and Ambassadors. The consultations were chaired by Tomáš Pojar, First Deputy Foreign Minister of the Czech Republic. The European Commission was represented by Hugues Mingarelli, Deputy Director-General of the Directorate-General for External Relations, officials of the Foreign Ministry of Sweden – the country which will assume EU Presidency in July 2009.
The agenda of the meeting included discussions on organizational details of the summit to be held in Prague on May 7-8, the project of the joint declaration, which was worked out by the European Union and aimed at the determination of the main principles of the program, as well as the goals and aims of the program.
The participants presented their views on that project. In his speech Arman Kirakossian mentioned that Armenian welcomes the Eastern Partnership program and assessed positively the draft Declaration. He mentioned that general and at the same time real goal of Armenia’s participation is political association and economic integration with the EU. Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister also stressed the necessity to provide opportunity for participation to the third countries, as well as to implement the program on the principles of transparency, integration and exclusion of regional differentiation.
On the same day Arman Kirakossian had a meeting with Tomáš Pojar, First Deputy Foreign Minister of the Czech Republic. In the course of the meeting wide range of issues on bilateral relations were discussed.