Eurasian integration was Armenia’s smartest political choice, says ex-parliamentarian
Armenia’s decision to join the Eurasian Economic Union was country’s most circumspect foreign policy choice in the past 16 years, a former parliament member said in an interview with Tert.am, commenting upon President Serzh Sargsyan September 3 2013 landmark political move.
Aghasi Arshakyan, who back in 1997 collected 1 million Armenians’ signatures in a petition supporting a plan of an economic bloc with Russia and Belarus, finds Eurasian integration the only reasonable choice to which Armenia could find no alternative in the current state of affairs.
“And on September 3 2013, I said that it was the most circumspect political decision of ours in the past 16 years, and the only way out. It isn’t good life that made this happen. So all the rest who want to throw us into uncertainty are reluctant to see that it is a guillotine for the nation,” he said, expressing his concerns over the increasing migration and the economic decline that followed the USSR collapse.
Asked whether he isn’t afraid that the economic risks of integration into the Russia-led bloc will be high in the light of the Western sanctions, Arshakyan ruled out such a possibility. “The market will not change, anyway; it will remain the same. And our security is entirely dependent upon them. I just want to remind you that in 2000, when we were intensively debating the EU integration issue [in parliament], the only person who was opposed to the plan and voted ‘against’ was me,” he said, further expressing his criticism of what he thought was limited to the European set of values (tolerance to religious sects, LGBTs and sex workers, etc).
Arshakyan, who was a member of Soviet Armenia’s Supreme Council in the pre-independence period and was twice elected to the National Assembly in the 1990's, said he finds the Russian civilization and culture much closer to Armenia than the European values. “We are closer to this other civilization camp. We have learned a lot from them and got familiarized with many international phenomena through the Russian language.”
The former lawmaker continued: “We, the Armenians, once had a state of three lakes. Then, under [King] Tigranes [the Great – (95-54 BC)], we said we had a fatherland of three seas, and that’s what we have always dreamt about. So why not put in plain words? As part of the USSR, we had a state of three oceans. Yet, we never knew the true value of it.”
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