President Serzh Sargsyan convenes National Security Council meeting

President of Armenia, Chairman of National Security Council Serzh Sargsyan convened today a National Security Council meeting to discuss the draft program of modernization of Armenia’s Armed Forces in 2018-2024 and the measures aimed at ensuring the legal framework of constitutional reforms.

Defense Minister Vigen Sargsyan reported on the first agenda item. Before that, the President presented his approaches and assessments over the Defense Ministry-drafted army modernization program, concerning which a presidential instruction was issued on October 24, 2017. Note that early this year the draft was discussed in-detail at the Ministry of Defense in the presence of President Serzh Sargsyan.

“Dear Security Council members, as you may remember, on October 24 last year, I tasked the Defense Minister to prepare a long-term development program for 2018-2024. My instruction was based on the following factor: new challenges are emerging in the region, and the best way to counter them is to have a strategic development program.

We saw many questions raised by the public; some people wondered how come the Defense Ministry or the Armed Forces did not have long-term development programs. Of course, they did: programs have always existed, but the difference between the former programs and the current program is that the previous programs were in many cases of short-term nature, while the programs that might be called long-term somewhat looked like wishes, visions and ideas.

This program differs from the remaining ones in a sense that it is a targeted program: it sets specific standards, criteria and deadlines, as well as well-calculated qualitative and financial figures. Indeed, the Defense Minister and the Chief of the General Staff reported to me about the program. I have had the opportunity to discuss this program with the leadership of the Ministry of Defense.

In my opinion, today we have a well-developed program with targets, figures and, most importantly, strong with accurate financial estimates.

What I said does not mean at all that the program can not be amended any further. Of course, it can, and that is why it has been submitted for Security Council’s approval, after which we will proceed to its implementation,” the President said.

The Security Council approved the proposed approaches and tasked the Government to consider and submit them for the President’s approval.

Justice Minister Davit Haroutunyan reported on the second issue, namely the implementation of specific measures to provide a legal framework for constitutional reforms.

The Minister advised that 5 out of 7 constitutional laws envisaged by this process have already been adopted; one of the remaining laws has been adopted in the first reading, and the other will be discussed during the upcoming four-day National Assembly sitting in February. The Minister reported that 27 other packages have been adopted in the frame of the same process.

David Haroutunyan introduced the legislative procedures for forming and streamlining the activities of the National Assembly, the Judiciary and the Government. The meeting approved the results stated during the process of ensuring the legal framework of constitutional reforms and instructed the Government to continue with their enforcement and finalize the process.