After meeting RA Defense Minister, Serge Sargsyan outside the Yerevan State University, the rector of the mentioned university, Aram Simonyan guided his guest to the newly repaired Public Relations department, after which they moved to the YSU hall to discuss the National Security Plan.
According to Serge Sargsyan, there are three ways of strategy development – take the strategy plan of some country, slightly amend it and make it yours or invite a group of foreign experts, who will come up with a strategy. The third way is to send our specialists abroad to receive training and knowledge and then come back to Armenia to develop the plan for us. The Minister said that Armenia had chosen the third way. An inner ministerial committee was established for this purpose, which had already managed to summon seven sessions. The Defense Minister said that the document will be discussed on November 17 at the National Academy of Sciences. On November 27 it will be submitted to the NA and later to the President.
The Defense Minister had come to listen to the viewpoints of the specialists of the Yerevan State University, which were quite interesting starting from the speech of the Dean of the Radio-Physics department, Vladimir Harutyunyan. The scientist doesn’t accept the fact that Georgia is number one among the partners of Armenia. He thinks that Russia must be in first place, then USA, Iran and France. Georgia is a “pawn” state, which to some extent even conducts an anti-Armenian policy.
Grigor Gharibyan, who represents the economics department, signified the role of education and knowledge. In this regard, he thinks it’s a wrong idea to send the 5-6 year-old kid to school by depriving him/her from mother nature. “The child should grow up in the sun but the opposite happens,” claimed Gharibyan.
The complaints of the historian Babken Harutyunyan were mainly connected with the fact that the security strategy had been experimented in other countries, like Russia or USA. “The document must first of all satisfy us”. In his opinion other countries may consider this document based on the own interests, which might not correspond with ours. According to the historian it was also necessary to have a secret document ancillary to the strategy plan. Besides only a few solutions are offered to the problems. Serj Sargsyan didn’t agree with this opinion. Sargsyan thinks that the security strategy cannot be secret. Other things originating based on the mentioned document may be secret, for example the defense doctrine.
In the opinion of the head of the world history faculty, Albert Stepanyan, the issue of the Armenian Genocide is not properly presented. “Our tragedy should become our advantage,” thinks Stepanyan. Sargsyan objected saying that, “It’s as if there is nothing said about the Genocide”. “But we have it, the formulations are wrong,” said the scientist.
The dean of the Philosophy department, Hrachik Mirzoyan was also dissatisfied with the Genocide issue. He didn’t agree with the following formulation, “In Ottoman Turkey, against Armenians…”. “Why don’t you say that these people were slaughtered in their fatherland,” asked Mirzoyan and said that through that we recede all our land of Western Armenia to Turkey. Mirzoyan expressed similar complaints about Karabagh. “The document mentions things about Karabagh by only bringing facts from 1988,” says the scientist. He also mentioned a few lingual and methodological defects connecting them with the work done by US experts.
The Dean of the Law Faculty, Gagik Ghazinyan mentioned that Armenia’s integration into European Institutions is not a goal (as noted in the documents). It is a means to reach those goals. He also added that it would be better if this document was legislation but not a declaration. Sargsyan doesn’t think that it’ll be adopted as a law. The logic is that the legislation demands mandatory conduct of the laws but this program is a plan for the activity of the government.
Political Scientist Aghasi Yenokyan has also spoken about integration issues. He mentioned that integration in the document looks like a secret code. It doesn’t say, who we should integrate with. He also mentioned a few questions regarding foreign policy. In terms of cooperation with Iran the document just states cultural and educational cooperation. The general viewpoints were wrapped up by the Minister of Education Levon Mkrtchyan. “To demand this document to reflect all the issues and questions means to make us stagnant,” he said.
Few speakers mentioned that Armenia pays more attention to foreign issues than internal affairs. Sargsyan said that it’s very natural. “The most important thing is to keep the population the same. China doesn’t have to worry about this. But we have to because there are only three million remaining in Armenia. And the main jeopardy comes from outside,” he said. The defense minister also added that his expectations of the meeting came true. But it would be better if people came up with recommendations just like what the representative of the Theology department, Hayr Anushavan said.
And the journalists, who’ve waited for the Minister for three hours, finally had a chance to receive a few answers. But the Minister was more inclined to answer questions relating to the topic. Thus, it’s natural that the Minister refused to comment on the resignation of his US colleague – Donald Rumsfield. It didn’t have anything to do with the topic and unfortunately the scientists didn’t get to know their opinion.