{"id":245817,"date":"2013-12-20T16:13:23","date_gmt":"2013-12-20T12:13:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/?p=245817"},"modified":"2013-12-20T16:14:01","modified_gmt":"2013-12-20T12:14:01","slug":"minister-asks-armenian-parliament-to-ratify-armenia-russia-gas-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2013\/12\/20\/minister-asks-armenian-parliament-to-ratify-armenia-russia-gas-deal.html","title":{"rendered":"Minister Asks Armenian Parliament to Ratify Armenia-Russia Gas Deal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n\t<span style=\"line-height: 1.6em;\">The contract signed between the governments of Armenia and Russia on the conditions of the sale of ArmRosGazprom shares and future activities was discussed in Armenia&#39;s National Assembly today. Fourteen MPs directed questions to RA Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Armen Movsissyan. The minister, presenting the contract, asked that it be ratified, since &quot;it will strengthen the two countries&#39; economic relations.&quot; Recall, under this agreement, the Armenian government will hand over its 20% share in ArmRosGazprom to the Russian party.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tArmenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF-D or Dashnaktsutyun) MP Aghvan Vardanyan asked if after ratifying this contract whether Armenia will be able to negotiate with Iran or other countries on importing gas at lower prices.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tThe minister said that the contract places no such restrictions before Armenia&#39;s government.&nbsp;\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tProsperous Armenia MP Vartan Oskanian said that he feels cheated: &quot;You have repeatedly stood on this platform and repeatedly said that the price of gas has not increased. It&#39;s obvious that the Republic of Armenia has accumulated a debt of $300 million. You didn&#39;t come and didn&#39;t present the problem. Moreover, you&#39;ve been asked whether the price of gas went up and you denied it. Now you&#39;ve come and you want to make us participants in a transaction which <a href=\"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/en\/2013\/12\/19\/armenian-national-congress-to-launch-vote-of-no-confidence-against-government.html\"><span style=\"color:#000080;\"><strong>you concealed from us<\/strong><\/span><\/a>. When did the price go up? Why did you hide it from the people?&quot;\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tArmen Movsissyan insisted that he didn&#39;t deceive anyone but said that a negotiating process was underway. &quot;That debt accumulated since 2011. How much the debt would be became clear only after the negotiations. One part [of the debt] they&#39;re forgiving; the other part we have to cover,&quot; he said.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tAnother Prosperous Armenia MP, Naira Zohrabyan (pictured, left), called the agreement &quot;vassal-like&quot;.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t&quot;I would ask that you read it carefully; there are no &#39;vassal-like relations&#39; in this agreement,&quot; replied Movsissyan.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The contract signed between the governments of Armenia and Russia on the conditions of the sale of ArmRosGazprom shares and&#8230;<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":245787,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[10624,10625,13298,10298,52273],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245817"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245817\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}