Armenia will raise issue of opening alternative to Upper Lars road  during visit of Foreign Minister of the country to Moscow

ArmInfo.Armenia will raise the issue of opening a road alternative to Upper Lars during the visit of the Foreign Minister of the country to Moscow. The press secretary of  the Armenian Foreign Ministry Tigran Balayan stated during a briefing  on June 5, answering the question what are the recent agreements on  the possible opening of an alternative road to Russia through  Abkhazia or South Ossetia.

Balayan recalled that the last meeting of Abashidze-Karasin took  place in Prague, after which both the Georgian and Russian sides made  public assessments. "Undoubtedly, within the framework of the visit  of Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanyan to Moscow this issue will also be  raised, and we did not hide and do not hide that the first party is  interested in having an alternative link with Russia - this Armenia.   And we will do everything we can to make this road open. For obvious  reasons, there are different sides that not only promote this, but  they also obstruct the opening of this road. We are supporters of  ensuring that everything is held confidentially before reaching  concrete agreements and results, "the RA MFA spokesman concluded.

Answering the question whether it is possible to sign a new strategic  document between Armenia and Georgia, Balayan stressed that Tbilisi  and Yerevan have a clear and simple spirit to do everything to ensure  that warm relations between the two countries are capitalized into  interstate ones so that they are raised to a qualitatively new level.  According to him, while it is difficult to say in what kind of  documents they will be expressed, however, now work on a large  document is not being conducted.

Earlier it became known that the representatives of Russia and  Georgia at the meeting in Prague reached an agreement according to  which for the customs control of cargo in the territories of Abkhazia  and South Ossetia a tripartite commission consisting of  representatives of Georgia, Russia and the Swiss company SGS should  be formed. If the agreement is implemented, Armenia will have  alternative ways of transporting goods in cases where the road  through the Upper Lars is closed.

To recall, special Envoy of the Prime Minister of Georgia on  Relations with Russia Zurab Abashidze said before the meeting with  Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin that official Tbilisi is  ready to open "trade corridors" from Russia to Georgia and Armenia.

To note, Yerevan is considering the implementation of the 2011  agreement on cargo monitoring at the Russian-Georgian border as an  alternative to the Upper Lars checkpoint, which is the only land  route linking Armenia to Russia. In winter, at the checkpoint due to  the threat of avalanche collapse there are clusters of trucks, a  similar situation occurs in the spring and autumn periods, when there  is a threat of debris flow. At one of the government sessions, former  Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan instructed the Transport Ministry to  develop alternative transport communications with Russia and hold  talks on this issue with the Russian and Georgian sides.