President Serzh Sargsyan held consultation with leadership of Ministry of Defense

The President of the Republic of Armenia and the Commander-in-Chief of the RA Armed Forces (AF) Serzh Sargsyan today visited the Ministry of Defense (MOD). Before holding consultations with the members of the AF executive staff and the leadership at the MOD’s administrative complex, the president watched demonstrative exercises organized at the MOD's sports complex and accompanied by the Minster of Defense and a group of other high-ranking servicemen visited the specialized aid station of the Ministry’s administrative complex, familiarized with working conditions and talked to employees. Moreover, at the MOD the President of Armenia watched the products of defense industry companies.

During the consultation held after the tour, a video conference was organized to get in touch with the army formations of the AF, commanders of a number of military units and combat positions.

The Minister of Defense, the Chief of RA AF General Staff, the Deputy Ministers presented to the President of the Republic of Armenia and the Commander-in-Chief of the RA AF Serzh Sargsyan the works carried out in the defense sphere and the forthcoming projects, the existing problems and the measures taken to deal with those problems. Minister Seyran Ohanyan reported on the defense sphere activities thoroughly touching upon the main functional directions, including the continual development of the defense sphere, the works accomplished in the fields of battle issues and battle duty, combat training and fighting trim, international inter-ministerial relations, public relations, as well as on works implemented in other fields. The minister underscored that the RA AF successfully conducted their battle duty at the line of contact forcing the opponent to uphold the ceasefire through furnishing of combat positions, the formation of all-round defense, anti-sabotage and repressive actions, the organization of smart defense for the purpose of ensuring a constructive negotiation atmosphere by means of military suppression.

Seyran Ohanyan assured that according to the instruction given by the president at the previous visit the arms ammunition appropriated for one academic year had been substantially increased with the aim of raising personnel skills. For the purpose of promoting educational activities the quantity of training and military equipment has also been increased.

The Chief of RA AF General Staff General-Mayor Yuri Khachaturov reported to the president on the organizational and structural changes of the army which played a great role in raising the level of armed forces’ combat training, the improvement of management system, as well as on the upgrading of procedures providing material and technical and moral support. He stressed that a special attention was paid to the process of saturating the army with armaments and military equipment. As a result, latest long range precision arms have been acquired raising the firing potential of the armed forces.

Deputy Minster Davit Tonoyan reported on the works accomplished in the fields of defense policy, personnel management, military education, mass media and public relations, as well as on the results of reforms. He underlined that the most significant initiative in the framework of enhancing the defense capacity was the revising process of the defense strategy which would be implemented until the end of 2015. The latter aims to ensure the long-range development of the dynamic system of defense and security until 2020 based on a long-term assessment of the security atmosphere formed around Armenia. The deputy minister made sure that considerable amount of work had been done, inter alia, in the field of public relations. In addition, they have regular contacts and collaborate with both local and international non-governmental organizations.

Another Deputy Minister Ara Nazaryan presented the 2013-2014 works carried out by the Ministry in the field of law and law enforcement. The deputy minister noted that as a result of continuous works the cooperation level between commanders of military units and law enforcement bodies (Military Police and Investigation Service) had increased. A large-scale effective measures and investigative actions have been undertaken in order to fight against corruption risks and other vicious phenomena. As a consequence, a number of crimes have been averted and revealed.

Deputy Minister Alik Mirzabekyan presented to the President of Armenia the works of Material and Technical Supply Department and Defense Industry Department accomplished in the accounting period in the fields of armaments, the ensuring of fighting ability of military equipment, the acquiring of new and modern military equipment, the improvement of the training and material base and in a number of other fields.

Serzh Sargsyan gave questions to the speakers on separate issues, gave instructions to the staff in charge and presented his observations on the top-priority directions of the Ministry’s activities and the forthcoming works. Underscoring that the progress in our armed forces is visible, the president stressed the importance of giving a new impulse to that progress considering all the efforts which were made to keep our armed forces efficient and address our national issues.

Touching upon the vital issues of social character requiring an urgent solution by the MOD, the President of Armenia underlined. “We are going to launch a big project in the second half of this year related to providing the families of fallen and invalid servicemen (freedom fighters) with apartments, and most probably, we will embark on the road of simply constructing apartments and allotting them,” said the president.

At the MOD, the president answered the questions of the participants, including the question on the famous Armenia-Turkey protocols.

“I think it is well known that we launched, and to be more precise, made the Armenian-Turkish process public pursuing honest goals to raise the regional cooperation and security to a new level. And if somebody thinks or thought at that time that we did not realize its difficulties he makes a flagrant error. We perfectly realized who we had business with and what difficult problem we attempted to solve. You saw in the course of time that the other negotiating party, I mean it is hard to name them partners, tried to set preconditions, tried to interpret some processes and then certain articles of the document in its own manner. However, today we can state that for that very reason the process ended in a stalemate and now it is frozen.

Nevertheless, we should take into account the results and first of all state that the freezing of the process was also predictable. No one can say that we thought we would definitely reach a final solution. We should state that in any case our partners, the countries of good will and supporters were finally convinced that the reason of the absence of the Armenian-Turkish relations was not the Armenian side. It is important because even our friends from time to time blamed us for being unconstructive and trying to set preconditions telling us that we were also guilty of the absence of those relations. I think now no one has any doubt about it.

Secondly, in my opinion we laid the foundation of a very important culture. We made the complex issue of such importance a subject of broad discussions and showed once again that we were ready to discuss the most complex and difficult issues with various social layers. Do you remember that a considerable number of people severely criticized us and insisted that those protocols had at least two very negative implications? The first side was that the recognition process of the Genocide would be suspended in the long run. Now I ask both you and those people: what Turks do about this issue? They have collected all their strength to fight against the Armenian Genocide Resolution adopted by the US Senate's Foreign Relations Committee. Do you know that this is the first resolution adopted over last 24 years? If we hampered the process and according to some people it should have been suspended, then why is the situation like this? And secondly, is there anyone who can boldly insist that those protocols hindered the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and that those protocols simply imply making compromises. The people who are aware of the issue know that today we have a strong position and firm bases in that process. During the report of the Commander of the Defense Army you saw the level of tensions existing on the border line. What it depends on? If they have better positions in the negotiation process and they can reach favorable a solution for them then why do they increase the harassment cases? And why have the harassment cases on the border line increased over the last 3 or 4 years? Thus, failing in one front they try to exert pressure, try to blackmail and to tell both us and the international community that all the same we want the issue to be solved in this way. However, it is obvious that now we have an advantageous position in the negotiation process.

There is also one more important argument. If many people said that the two documents were against the Armenian interest and were evidently driven by Turkey’s interests then in that case why does not the Turks ratify the documents? That is they are aware of their interests but a part of Armenians are aware of the Turks’ interests? Or the Turks feel sorry for us saying that Armenians made a mistake, so let us forgive them this time. It is clear that if that document had been driven by Turkey’s interests, they would not have taken into account neither Azerbaijan’s position nor any other’s position and would have calmly ratified those documents. And if those documents had been driven by Turkey’s interests they would not have provoked tensions in Turkey’s internal political life. This is all.

I answered a little bit thoroughly because such questions have not been given for a long time and the answer apparently depends on the last events,” said President Serzh Sargsyan.

At the end of the consultation, a group of MOD employees were awarded encouragements for their conscientious and effective work. Head of First Division of the Staff’s Secretariat lieutenant-colonel Karine Amirkhanyan, the senior officer of Border Mission and Government Bodies Cooperation Group of AF GS Operative Department lieutenant-colonel Samvel Asatryan, Deputy Chief of Military Police lieutenant-colonel Armen Harutyunyan, Head of Material Service of AF GS Rear Department lieutenant-colonel Vahan Papyan, Head of AF GS Military Orchestra Branch colonel Armen Poghosyan, Deputy Head of AF GS Armaments Department colonel Avetik Seropyan and Head of General Military Units Training Division of AF GS Military Preparedness Department colonel Koryun Piliposyan were awarded Letters of Commendation.