Interview of the Secretary of the Security Council on Civilnet

29 / 04 / 2020

The Secretary of the Security Council Armen Grigoryan has spoken about the internal security, defense sector reform issues, as well as, the security and post-election processes in Artsakh on Civilnet.

Touching upon the events in Gavar and the internal security issues, Mr. Armen Grigoryan noted that "realizing this fact, we have initiated a large package of police reforms. This case once again confirmed that we need to speed up these reforms. There is a need for thoughts and ideas here, because those ideas are nourished in a certain environment and allow such events to take place.” At the same time, the Secretary of the Security Council stressed the need for public perception of the police reforms, noting: "Of course, we will make progress in many components of the police reforms, but if there are no changes in public perception, the reforms will not be very successful."

Speaking about the post-election processes in Artsakh, Mr. Armen Grigoryan said: "In general, post-election passions have calmed down, and general political agendas are being discussed in Artsakh."

"In reality, those territories were not lands for me, they were security lines, and it was unacceptable to hand over even a trifle part of those security lines even before taking the office," said the Secretary of the Security Council Mr. Armen Grigoryan, speaking about the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Regarding the work and activity directions of the Defence Reforms Commission Mr. Armen Grigoryan said: "The philosophy of the reforms is that we should try to ensure that the Ministry of Defence does not engage in functions that are not related to the military. For example, when changes in the meal plan were made it had a huge impact on the army. By the way, we were able to eliminate the criminal subculture in this sphere. It is also very important to increase the role of the parliament as a control body. We need to think about the mechanisms and institutions that will increase the role of the parliament in the defence sector by means of policy development and control mechanisms.

The full video is below