“They will be punished in a very strict way”

21/09/2010 Armine AVETYAN

– Mr. Ohanyan, have you identified the persons showed in the videos posted on Youtube.com yet?

– What do you think? Could we possibly have identified them so quickly? We don’t see the faces and passed the videos to professionals, special experts, who are working on that. We will try to find them. Let me say that if in the army there are people, who are doing such things to soldiers, they will be punished. So will be the people, who have prepared such materials and disseminated those. I deeply believe that is misinformation to the army.

– It means that you don’t believe that the officer is able to do anything like that to the soldiers.

– No, I don’t believe that it was shot by accident.

– Regardless of this case, such phenomena are increasing in our army. That is the reason why this case has become quite popular within the society. At any rate our society is sure that such incidents have been happening and still exist.

– I wouldn’t say that such cases are increasing. Compared to 2007 such cases were fewer. The reason why I am bringing up 2007 is that in that year our army had the least loss. Actually today we have less cases and the reason why people have started to speak about this so much is the noise around the recent cases.

– Would you say the number of such cases in 2007 and now?

– I will not mention any numbers not because I am hiding anything but because I don’t wish to bring any numbers.

– Because it will be good information for the enemy.

– Yes. Let me say that in our army currently educational works are conducted in a planned order and are directed to revealing and identifying such cases. I would say vice versa. Currently the public control is at such a high level that we cannot and didn’t hide anything from the society. We mostly publicize information except for the cases of the necessity of secrecy.

– How do you explain the situation when sometimes dead soldiers are brought home and the reason of death is considered suicide? But later it turns out that suicide was committed.

– But who said that such reasons are brought up?

– The last case connected with Artak Nazaryan.

– That is the only case when our version was changed later. Today criminal case is launched. There are culprits, who either caused the suicide or killed themselves. I personally control this case. It will be investigated especially now that we got suspects.

– What would you say about the incident in Zangakatun military base? So these soldiers rioted because they were left hungry.

– There was no such incident in the military base of Zangakatun.

– Don’t you see certain context in that? You are saying that the numbers are the same but in the past all that was not spread. Perhaps this whole noise is directed against you.

– Today we need to clarify in how many fronts are army is fighting. As is known one front is Azerbaijan. The others should be revealed. There are internal fronts that hit the army from the bottom and from inside. And when I reveal them I am going to punish them in a very strict way. I will not punish them not because of our mistakes or any other side accusations but for their attempts of destabilizing the army. I may see a lot in the context.

– Maybe all that is organized by the head of the main command regiment Yuri Khachaturov?

– There is nothing like that.

– What relations do you have with him? They say that you don’t even greet each other.

– Who says? That military person? He comes to my office several times a day. How can the minister of defense communicate with somebody several times a day and not even greet? There is nothing like that and we work in a normal environment.

– Khachaturov is known in the army as a bribe-taker. Are you not concerned about these rumors?

– There is nothing like that. Do you see that your questions are exacerbating the situation even more? And I don’t even know what they are going to write in the papers tomorrow.

– In fact Azerbaijan asserted that the launch of the deal of U-300 is in progress. Do you have information whether Azerbaijan attained these systems and the quantity of those?

– The information that we have says that this issue wasn’t denied and most probably Azerbaijan will attain this system, which is a defense system. We don’t have any fear from that system to take into account the fact that we have several times more of that system here in Armenia. And we know better how to make it work and make maximum use from that.

– What it is your assessment of the possible resumption of war?

– The minister of defense should never exclude the possibility of war. My post is meant to be always ready to protect the people from any kind of aggression. And the number one condition of withdrawal of the enemy is the formation of the right environment in the society. But at the moment I don’t think that Azerbaijan may start military actions despite their activities, which come to demonstrate that they are trying to provoke something.