Speaker of Parliament of Armenia Alen Simonyan is assuring that the issue of repatriating the Armenian captives who are still held in Azerbaijan has always been and will always be in the agenda of all international meetings of the Armenian Government.
“The mediations haven’t stopped even for a minute,” the Speaker told reporters when asked about the process. “These mediations have always taken place. The mediations and talks are present in all our international meetings and will be present for as long as everyone hasn’t safely returned,” Simonyan said.
Addressing Ambassador-at-large Edmon Marukyan’s statement where he warned that Azerbaijan is attempting to create legitimate grounds for preparing a provocation on the border, Simonyan said that Azerbaijan has always had its style of conduct, always used it in negotiations, but the negotiations process continues despite all predictions alleging that the current authorities won’t be able to negotiate.
Speaker Simonyan said Armenia will continue the path to the peace process.
“The citizen of Armenia and us consider that we must first of all resolve the security issues, while the security issues are solved in two ways – by establishing peace with neighboring countries and by having a strong military. We will move forward in the direction of developing the army through legislative initiatives and big staffing changes. By the way, before the war they were often saying that the army has been decapitated and so on, but nothing like that happened. Now it is obvious that there are major changes in the army. I can say that the Minister of Defense Suren Papikyan is fulfilling his duties very successfully,” Simonyan said.
