If Nagornyy Karabakh Republic is the only obstacle for Armenia's joining the Customs Union, in that case nothing will hinder Yerevan again return to the talks on the Association Agreement with Brussels, deputy director of the Caucasus Institute, Sergey Minasyan, said at today's press-conference.
'As the road map on Armenia's joining the Customs Union has been already signed, we can say that President of Kazakhstan Nursultal Nazarbayev's oral declaration was more of a formal nature", - he said and added that the given declaration was more directed to Moscow then Yerevan, and Kazakhstan pursues its own aims. Minasyan also linked Nazarbayev's declaration with specific relations between Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan.
When summing up the results of 2013, the expert said that although Armenia failed some programmes, it cannot not be blamed for that as the EU is also responsible for their failure. The latter was trying to make geo-political changes in the region, but did not manage, as Russia turned to be stronger, Minasyan said.
He thinks that Armenia has managed to preserve complimentarity in its foreign policy. Minasyan is confident that Armenia will go on cooperating with the European Union and sign a new Association agreement which will be not so much ambitious and the economic composing part in this agreement will be less significant, but other elements will prevail, in particular, human rights, superiority of law and other elements.
To recall, President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev said at the Moscow Session of Eurasian Economic Council on 24 December, that his country is ready to sign the "road map" on Armenia's joining the Customs Union but with special opinion, as it requires to explain the problem about the borders of the Customs Union because of the Karabakh conflict. Meanwhile, in October 2013 when replying to Arminfo correspondent's question, President of Belarus Aleksandr Lukashenko said that he does not rule out the possibility of giving special status in the Customs Union to unrecognized or partly recognized states at CIS area.