АРМИНФО - Head of EDB: Clinton's statements on prevention of integration processes are recurrence of imperial thinking

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s statements about Washington’s intention to prevent the integration processes in the post-Soviet space are recurrence of

imperial thinking, Igor Finogenov, Chairman of the Board of the Eurasian Development Bank (EDB), told Armenian journalists in Yerevan on Tuesday.

To recall, during the summit of the OSCE Ministerial Council in Dublin, just hours before bilateral talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Clinton slammed «a move to re-Sovietise the region», referring to plans to set up a new trade union between Russia and some former Soviet nations. «It’s going to be called customs union, it will be called Eurasian Union and all of that. But let’s make no mistake about it. We know what the goal is and we are

trying to figure out effective ways to slow down or prevent it», she said.

Finogenov qualified Clinton’s statement as confrontational. When the global economy is shocked and a model of interaction is needed to consolidate stability, such statements seem strange, Finogenov stressed. He thinks that integration is one of the factors increasing the welfare of nations.

As regards de-integration processes, including economic ones, they have sad consequences. «I think the resistance to integration processes at the political level is a short-sighted policy», he stressed. Finogenov hopes that the real policy of the USA will not hinder the integration process of the CIS countries. More than 50% of total investment in Armenia’s economy comes from Russia. This is also proved by the money transfers of labor migrants from Armenia. Over Jan-Sept 2012 these money transfers totaled $1.3 bln, which has an essential impact on the consumer demand given the current economic situation in Armenia.