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Liana Sayadyan

President Hollande to Visit Caucasus: "Frozen Conflicts" a Top Priority

French President Francois Hollande is scheduled to arrive in Armenia on May 12 as part of a tour of the Caucasus.

Hollande will first travel to Baku, followed by Yerevan and Tbilisi.

There was a press briefing about the trip today in Paris, given by Mr. Fabien Penone, Deputy Diplomatic Advisor to the President, French Republic. In Yerevan, the French Embassy allowed French speaking Armenian journalists to link up with the briefing and ask questions.

At their meeting in Yerevan, the two presidents will discuss bilateral relations and the future prospects of closer ties between Armenia and the EU against the backdrop of the current geo-political situation and the crisis in Ukraine.

“We understand that Armenia has close historical ties to Russia, but President Serzh Sargsyan has reaffirmed the will of the Armenian government to continue developing relations with the EU,” said Penone.

An Armenian-French economic forum is also scheduled to take place, tasked with strengthening bilateral economic relations. When President Sargsyan visited France, Hollande underscored that relations between the two nations, in the political and humanitarian sectors, exist on the highest level, but that cooperation is lacking on the economic front.

The entrance of the French supermarket chain Carrefour into the Armenian market this year will be a significant step to address this shortcoming. President Hollande is scheduled to visit the site where the supermarket will be built. There are plans to open a total of eleven Carrefour stores in Armenia.

At the briefing Fabien Penone said that another aim of Hollande’s trip to the region is to discuss the issue of frozen conflicts with the presidents of the three Caucasus nations. Regarding South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Fabien Penone reiterated his country’s official position of supporting Georgian territorial integrity.

When asked by a French reporter if Hollande would make a similar statement in Baku regarding the Karabakh conflict, Penone reminded the members of the press that settlement negotiations under the auspices of the OSCE Minsk Group are ongoing on the basis of the Madrid Principles which take into account both territorial integrity and self-determination based on the expression of free will.

“France will continue to work to seek confidence mechanisms between Armenia and Azerbaijan and calls for the negotiations to go on,” said Penone.

Regarding a question about military cooperation with the Caucasian countries, Fabien said, “It would contradict our mission within the scope of the OSCE Minsk Group to find a resolution to the conflict.”

A French-Armenian reporter posed a question regarding the ongoing trial in Armenia of actor Vardan Petrosyan, a French citizen. Penone commented that the issue was a legal, rather than a political matter, linked to the specifics on the traffic accident.

President Hollande will also visit the Armenian Genocide Memorial at Tzitzernakaberd and will attend a Charles Aznavour concert in Yerevan.

Aznavour also performed at a concert organized by the Armenian government when former French President Jacques Chirac visited Armenia in 2006. 

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