Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamian will attend after all a Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) summit that was due to take place in Yerevan but was moved to Moscow because of the escalation of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
The prime ministers of Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan were scheduled to hold a regular session of the EEU’s “intergovernmental council” in the Armenian capital on Friday. The meeting was cancelled after Kazakhstan’s Prime Minister Karim Masimov refused to attend it, proposing Moscow as an alternative venue.
Kazakhstan, which has strong linguistic and cultural ties with Azerbaijan, apparently wanted to avoid the impression that it supports Armenia in the Karabakh conflict.
Armenian leaders rejected the Kazakh proposal and threatened to boycott the rescheduled meeting in Moscow throughout last week. President Serzh Sarkisian publicly accused the Central Asian state of damaging the EEU’s reputation when he met with Russia’s Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in Yerevan on Friday.
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Medvedev sought to downplay Kazakhstan’s stance. He assured Sarkisian that the prime ministers of the five ex-Soviet states aligned in the Russian-led bloc will meet in Yerevan later this year.
Abrahamian’s office announced on Tuesday that he will fly to Moscow later in the day to take part in the summit. The Armenian premier will also hold separate talks with Medvedev, it said.
