YEREVAN. – All the necessary works are being done in that respect; I cannot say more. Minister of Foreign Affairs Zohrab Mnatsakanyan stated this in a talk with journalists in the National Assembly of Armenia Thursday, referring to the fact that the Prime Minister had recently petitioned to the Russian President to start immediate consultations to determine the types and the amount of assistance that Russia can provide to Armenia for ensuring its security.

"As far as our contractual relations and the resulting functions are concerned, what is needed is being done now. The 1997 agreement [with Russia] is the basic agreement from which also stems the functions that are expressed in other documents, too" he said.

To the question whether there is a reluctance on the part of Armenia to petition to the CSTO, taking into account that at least two of the CSTO members—Belarus and Kazakhstan—are the direct economic partners of Azerbaijan, the FM answered: "We [Armenia] carry out our steps as we find necessary in terms of effectiveness and speed. We work with three Co-Chairs [of the OSCE Minsk Group], and we work with individual countries as per the mechanism we have. Our entire mechanism has been in use since day one.”