ARMENIA SEES CLOSER TIES WITH RUSSIA.

Armenian president Levon Ter-Petrosian congratulated Yeltsin and the people of Russia in a special statement on the outcome of the election. He said Russia’s "liberation from the nightmare of the Communist ideology" paves the way toward increasingly closer Armenian-Russian relations. The Armenian president was one of the few among his CIS colleagues to say in his statement that his country and Russia "share a common cultural-historic space." (Interfax, July 4 and 5) During the electoral campaign in Russia, Ter-Petrosian had said more than once that a Communist victory there would doom the CIS. Communist Moscow had supported Azerbaijan while post-Communist Moscow has supported the Armenian side in the Karabakh conflict.

Azerbaijan Looks Forward to "Fully Democratic" Russia.