On June 14, the Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian had a meeting with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Sweden Carl Bildt who is in Yerevan on an official visit.

Welcoming the guest, Minister Nalbandian mentioned that Armenia attaches great importance to the continuation of comprehensive development of mutually beneficial cooperation with the Scandinavian region, especially Sweden, and expressed confidence that his counterpart’s visit to Armenia would give a new impetus to the expansion and deepening of the interaction between the two countries.

The Swedish Foreign Minister expressed gratitude for the warm reception and underlined that recently Sweden has exerted active efforts towards the development of the relations with Armenia and the South Caucasus.

Ministers Nalbandian and Bildt touched upon the expansion of legal framework between the two countries, development of inter-parliamentary, economic, educational and cultural cooperation, establishment of relations on decentralized level and the steps undertaken towards the promotion of business ties. The sides mutually noted that in recent years the high-level reciprocal visits and numerous meetings in the international scenes are a proof of the willingness to provide a new impetus for the bilateral relations. The Ministers agreed to exert additional efforts to expand the relations in various spheres.

In the course of the talks the relations between Armenia and the European Union were touched upon. The sides had a detailed talk on the implementation process of the Eastern Partnership Program, one of the main initiators of which is Sweden. The negotiations over the Association Agreement, visa facilitation regime and the preparatory works of the launch of the Free and Comprehensive Trade Agreement were particularly discussed.

During the meeting, the sides exchanged views on the process of negotiations of the Nagorno-Karabakh issue and reaffirmed that there is no alternative to a peaceful settlement of the issue. In that context, Edward Nalbandian presented the recent developments in the negotiations ahead of the summit to be held in Kazan.

A wide range of international and regional issues were on the agenda of the negotiations, as well.

The meeting was followed by a joint press conference by Edward Nalbandian and Carl Bildt.