On the second day of their official visit to Georgia, the members of the Armenian Government delegation led by Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan on Friday visited Heroes’ Square of Tbilisi and laid flowers at the memorial.
Afterwards, Karapetyan headed for Armenian St. George Cathedral of Tbilisi, where he was met by the leader of the Georgian Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church, Archbishop Vazgen Mirzakhanyan, and representatives of the Armenian community of Georgia.
The Armenian PM laid flowers at the tombs of Sayat-Nova and renowned Armenian generals in the cathedral courtyard. Archbishop Mirzakhanyan served a prayer and wished strength and courage to the Government led by PM Karapetyan. Furthermore, the leader of the Georgian Diocese stressed that they believe in the success of the Government led by Karen Karapetyan in favor of the development and progress of Armenia.
Karapetyan also visited St Ejmiatsin Church of Tbilisi, where he laid flowers at the monument dedicated to the victims of the 1915 Armenian Genocide. Apart from this, he toured the Cultural, Educational and Youth Center "Hayartun" operating by the church and met with the representatives of the Armenian community.
Touching on the details of the results of his official visit to Georgia, the head of the Armenian Government noted that he considered it very essential, constructive, warm and meaningful. During the meetings, reference was also made to both bilateral and regional relations. “Our delegation is quite satisfied with the results of the visit and the treatment we were honored with. We discussed all the spheres which are of mutual interest to us. We have reached agreements on all the directions. Moreover, we have arranged on giving new quality of regional nature to our economic cooperation so that we can more often come up before the external world with great joint market. This will be the sphere of tourism, our new free trade zone, which we are creating with Iran, and other spheres. We have spoken on business expansion and agreed on using the Georgian experience in the sphere of tourism. We have also agreed to transfer our experience in the sphere of information technologies to the Georgian side. This constructive visit makes me excited and obligated,” Karapetyan noted, adding that the Georgian partners were proposed to use Armenia as a platform for entering the EAEU market. Apart from this, agreement was reached on holding an “open house”for Georgian businessmen, during which different programs will be discussed with them in Armenia. Referring to the issue on the alterative path to the Upper Lars, the PM said: “We have discussed the issue. Be sure, there will be one.”
In his words, apart from the economic relations, during the negotiations reference was also made to the strengthening of ties between the two peoples. Karapetyan stressed that enormous work should be done in this direction. “We have an issue of establishing ties between the generations to come and we have [thus] agreed to use different platforms to organize the communication of the youths. We also talked about the issues of Georgian Armenians, including Javakheti Armenians, the educational sphere, textbooks and teacher training. There were no issues regarding which we could have a misunderstanding,” Karapetyan noted.
Asked how he sees Armenia in several years, the PM expressed conviction that it will be a state, which every Armenian, regardless of their place of abode, will be proud of. “We have the right to and potential for this. We should set ambitious issues before us, which will be realizable if we all unite. It is simply necessary to believe and help each other in order to move forward.”
Moreover, Karapetyan informed that in the morning he met with the Georgian Armenian businessmen and listened to their proposals, as well as issues of concern, which the Armenian Government will soon respond to.
The representatives of the Armenian community of Georgia thanked the PM for visiting the country, providing detailed information on his visit and responding to all the questions.