News from Berlin - In a private reunion, German Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, liaised with his counterpart from Armenia, Edward Nalbandian, in the Federal Foreign Office in Berlin on 17 June.

In the past years, both countries have nurtured an intense bond. Nalbandian has been in office since 2008 and has met several times with Steinmeier during his first term in office.

Germany represents a middleman in Armenia’s relation with the European Union (EU).

The country fosters a complex relation with the EU. In September 2013, it called off the Association Agreement, which purpose it to set up an agenda for the EU accession process, as it announced its intention to join the Eurasia Customs Union composed of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan.

Nalbandian, nonetheless, expressed his interest in Europe’s support for his country’s reform process.

Commenting on the situation in Ukraine, where negotiations on gas price broke down on 16 June and an Ukrainian military aircraft was shot, Steinmeier reiterated his backing for the country’s newly elected president, Petro Poroshenko.

On a side note, the German minister also addressed the current issue in Iraq, which has witnessed the dramatic rise of the jihad organisation Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS). He notably announced that a remaining group of German workers in the refinery in Baiji had been successfully evacuated.

News from Berlin – Berlin Global