Oskanian: Today, in our meeting with the high-level representatives of the US State Dept, we focused on three areas: bilateral issues, energy-related issues and of course the Nagorno Karabakh conflict resolution process.

Regarding the first, the upcoming Millennium Challenge Compact signing ceremony is of course uppermost in everyone's mind. The Minister of Finance will sign the compact in Washington on March 27. I'll be present during the ceremony. We are truly fortunate to have these kinds of significant resources made available to us. This is a very serious program that offers us the opportunity to make huge infrastructure improvements, and it's related directly to our democratization process. This program will put Armenia-US relations at a new level.

Energy issues, too, are obviously, very important today. It was interesting to hear the US thinking on this subject. For Armenia, the diversification of energy sources is a matter of utmost priority. Our energy security depends on our being able to maintain the nuclear resource, and we discussed all of these topics.

Finally, the Nagorno Karabakh issue: Here the fundamental issue is that negotiations continue. After Rambouillet and the backtracking that we sensed there, the challenge is to preserve the positive achievements and build on those. The co-chairs will meet soon and then it will be clearer what might happen next. Our discussions today revolved around how we might do that in a way that tries to find solutions for the deadlocked situation in which we find ourselves today.

Question: What do you make of Aliev's statements, including those today, extolling their increasing military capability?

Oskanian: It must be exactly because of their huge military budget that they have been working overtime at the border and repeatedly violating the ceasefire. They must have extra bullets to spare.

But let's look at this from a global context. Today, in the civilized world, peoples and states don't compete over the size of their military budget. That's not what they take pride in when they compare themselves with their neighbors. Today, the spheres of competition are elsewhere. And in all those spheres, Armenia is ahead of Azerbaijan. So far ahead that there is really no room to compare. Beginning with the UN's human development index, Armenia is ahead of Azerbaijan. The international index that gauges Armenia's investment climate puts Armenia way ahead of Azerbaijan. They're not even a member of the WTO. There is no comparison in level of democratic development, human rights protections or press freedoms. In indexes that measure economic freedoms and development, and transparency and gains in the battle against corruption, Armenia is disproportionately better than Azerbaijan. Despite the fact that it's how many years now that Azerbaijan produces 400,000 barrels of oil, the per capita income in Azerbaijan still hasn't reached Armenia's. It is better that Azerbaijan tries to reach Armenia's levels in these fields, than try to compete and take pride in being ahead with its military capacity.